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Google Checkout has so far been a dismal failure. If I had to give it a numerical rating, it would not be a zero. Rather, I’d give it a googol..as in a-hundred zeros. There is a lot to say on this topic. Don’t want to bore you. Needless to say, the product is far from where Google would like it to be.

During the past few months, it has become evident that Google Checkout is desperate. I will demonstrate yet another sign of desperation. For those of us who read The Search by John Battelle, we know that Google never spent money promoting their search product.

Google search exploded because it was good. And so the gospel of google spread without formal advertising.

When was the last time you recall Google ever advertising their products? The only place you will see ads for Google…is on Google itself…not a small medium either when you’re the largest search engine in the world! Just to give you an example, if you make a google search for the term “affiliate marketing“, you will see a google ad for AdSense.

This non-external-ad-trend has been broken. This evening, I saw a banner on gawker.com promoting Google Checkout. The banner even had a special offer & a customized landing page.

Make no mistake, Google can afford to buy ads. They can even afford a gigantic office in NYC. However, given Google’s previous successes with bypassing typical ad-spends, this banner ad speaks volumes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 1:52 am and is filed under Google Checkout. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.