Checkout was introduced in June, 2006 (it was rumored to be called “GBuy” ahead of launch). It was directed at both consumers and merchants. Checkout was also intended to be tightly integrated with AdWords. Online retailers or stores that used AdWords received favorable payment processing terms.

In some ways it was Google’s answer to PayPal but it was also different in a number of respects (it didn’t allow peer to peer transactions for example). PayPal owner eBay at the time took it very seriously as a threat and did a great many hostile things, such as refusing to allow Checkout on eBay and pulling its AdWords advertising in protest.

There was a bit of a replay of that fracas when earlier this year eBay sued Google over two former PayPal executives who helped launch Google Wallet.

Checkout was never really explained or marketed to consumers — Google did run lots of online ads directed toward AdWords advertisers and merchants however. In addition, for a couple of years, AdWords advertisers using Checkout were permitted to put an icon/button in their ads making them more prominent than competitors’ ads.

Consumers were the key to Checkout’s success, however, and they really never adopted it in large numbers. We don’t really know how many Checkout users there are today but it has got to be very small by comparison to PayPal, for example.

Google also flirted with making Checkout a shopping portal but didn’t commit to that because it had Google Shopping/product search. The strategy around Checkout was thus muddy and ineffectual.

The failure to “sell” Checkout to consumers came back to haunt Google later after the Android Market launched and there was no widely adopted, easy-to-use iTunes-like system to pay for apps. Android developers became frustrated that they couldn’t monetize very well on Android. Google and its carrier partners offered a patchwork of methods to pay for apps (i.e., carrier billing). None of this worked particularly well for Google or developers.

Google is a much different company today than it was in 2006. It recognizes and appreciates the value of marketing products to consumers. Its Google Wallet launch and subsequent marketing reflect that greater sophistication.

One thing that’s not clear is whether those with existing Checkout accounts will automatically have their payment cards incorporated into Wallet. That’s my guess. Google said in an email, “Buyers will be able to make purchases with their existing accounts at sites that accept either Google Checkout or Google Wallet.”

Google Wallet is off to a fairly strong start (from a visibility standpoint at least) and will ultimately prove to be a much more successful product than Checkout turned out to be.

Checkout icons in AdWords were originally introduced in 2006 and a new badge design was rolled out in 2007.

Then

Now

As for the elimination of the badges… “We’re making this change to improve the user experience on Google search results pages,” an e-mail sent by Google reportedly said, according to eCommerceCircle.

The move comes as Google steps up efforts to increase adoption of +1, another brightly-colored badge appearing in search results. Earlier today, the company announced that publishers can now put +1 badges on their sites to gather support from their users. When people click the +1 button on sites, that URL displays with the badge whenever it appears in SERPs.

Google’s decision also comes as it focuses its payments energy on Google Wallet, announced last week. Though Google Checkout was announced to great fanfare in 2006, it hasn’t been as successful as originally expected. A lawsuit filed against Google last week by competitor PayPal refers to Checkout as “mostly a tool for acquiring customer information for the benefit of Google’s other products and services.”

Almost like a predator lying in wait, the very next day Google pounced and announced One Pass, an open system in which Google takes only 10 percent and allows publishers access to much more data about users than Apple provides. “Google One Pass is a payment system that enables publishers to set the terms for access to their digital content,” reads the tagline.

It’s another classic Apple vs. Google battle (closed vs “open”), with Google being seen as a much better option by some publishers.

Google’s Great Timing

The Google announcement, roughly 24 hours after Apple’s, seems also like a highly calculated PR maneuver that makes the Google system look very attractive by comparison. Had Google introduced One Pass before Apple or in the absence of any Apple subscription announcement it would not look as sexy I suspect. (Google has been working on the content payments platform for at least a year.) As GigaOM’s Matthew Ingram astutely points out One Pass resembles other online content payment platforms that have met with little or no success in the recent past.

The difference between Google One Pass and pre-existing content-payments platforms is that One Pass will work for tablets and smartphones (“all devices”). It’s not clear, however, whether publishers can use One Pass to generate subscriptions that can then be viewed or accessed via iPad apps, though I assume the answer is “yes.” That would be amusing: Publishers all using Google One Pass to generate subscriptions on their websites that are then consumed mostly on the iPad.

Irony: Google To The Rescue

What’s ironic to me is the way that Google is now being embraced and celebrated for its new publisher-friendly platform when it has been derided and bashed by content publishers and newspapers in particular for allegedly “destroying” their business model. Google has consistently said it wants to support traditional journalism and now is putting its platform where its mouth is, so to speak. Publishers signing on at launch with One Pass include several German publications and US publishers Media General, Bonnier and Rust Communications.

However at the “consumer moment of truth” One Pass might not turn out to be quite as publisher friendly as publishers think. One Pass is “powered by Google Checkout,” which has had mixed success to date in generating revenues for Android developers. Google and carriers have been scrambling to add additional payments options to mollify unhappy developers.

As an aside, One Pass in addition to helping publishers and supporting “quality journalism” serves Google’s longer-term interest in bringing more consumers into its payments fold. That in turn serves multiple objectives for Google including improving Android Market paid monetization.

The Apple Ecosystem

Apple’s iTunes has more than 160 million users in 23 countries, according to Apple in Q3 last year. There’s much less “friction” in iTunes than in the Android market today. There’s also a stronger “culture” of paid apps in the iOS Apps Store, although paid apps are growing on Android. Using myself as a focus group of one, I’ve bought dozens of iPhone and iPad apps but purchased only two Android apps.

Apple’s superior ability to monetize apps for developers (to date) and the “culture” it has created around paid apps among iOS users argues that publishers may find higher sales via iTunes than Google’s One Pass. We’ll have to wait and see of course. But that’s my hypothesis.

Let’s establish all the usual qualifiers; this is an unconfirmed story and so on. And there are plenty of times when these TechCrunch-surfaced rumors turn out to be wrong. But this one seems to be supported by a job posting (“Product Management Leader, Games – Mountain View“).

Given that, here are the main elements of the TechCrunch story beyond the headline itself:

• The Google investment in Zynga is “between $100 million and $200 million”
• The investment was completed “a month ago or so”
• “Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year”

Then there’s further speculation that gets more interesting:

• “It will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games”
• PayPal could be replaced with Google Checkout “as the primary payment option”

Zynga recently announced a partnership with Yahoo that could serve as a kind of template for the Google relationship. Zynga also launched FarmVille, one of its most popular games, on the iPhone. These efforts are a part of a broader move for the company to “diversify” and become less dependent on Facebook — to which it owes its initial success.

Given that there’s not exactly a “search angle” here, I’ll be concise about what I find fascinating about this story.

During the heyday of Second Life, Google started and later shuttered its own “virtual world” — a kind of open-ended social game — called Lively. While it would be difficult for Google to build a credible gaming site from scratch, Zynga potentially jump-starts a Google Games quite effectively. Beyond that consider “Google Games” played on “Google TV.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

The idea that social gaming becomes a backdoor into the “social graph” for Google is fascinating. When considering the anticipated rebirth of social networking at Google (“Google Me”) I opined that Google needs to either put together a great product, more elegant or functional than Facebook, or come at social networking from a different angle:

[W]hat capabilities or services or tasks does it offer or enable that Facebook doesn’t or can’t? Because if Google Me can’t answer the “why question” it’s DOA.

Clearly Facebook offers social games. But gaming might be part of that different approach for Google. I’m sure that gaming isn’t the alpha and omega of Google Me (groups also appears to be part of the strategy). However it could be a useful “contributor” to a social network.

Then there’s the Google Checkout angle.

Google’s payments platform remains a missed opportunity for the company, and for Android to some degree. Google failed to market the service to consumers when it launched and it has made limited inroads vs. PayPal. However it’s a service that still has enormous potential for Google if it can gain consumer adoption. Tying it to a popular gaming site, which is speculation built upon speculation, could give Checkout a meaningful and perhaps even material boost.

In summary, the hypothetical “Google Games” offers a range of potential benefits for both Google and Zynga. These include additional independence for the latter from Facebook and several opportunities for Google around payments and the social graph. We’ll see if any of it happens.

Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.

Here are some screenshots provided by Google, which look quite similar to the originally leaked screens from the earlier “Flipper” rumors:

According to Google’s Marissa Mayer, Google co-founder Larry Page said, “Why isn’t the web like a magazine?” and wanted a way to browse it. Well, Fast Flip lets users visually browse (as well as search) news. There’s also personalization; the site makes recommendations based on your clicks, searches and other behavior.

When you click on any of the stories, you’re taken to publisher sites, which makes them happy. Speaking of which, Google’s initial publisher partners include the NY Times, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek.

Google is banking that an improved user experience will mean lots of traffic and page views. Google says that revenue generated from ads on the site will be split with publishers. (This could potentially be a goldmine of display inventory for Google if it expands the content from news into a broad range of magazines.)

If it’s a hit, this probably becomes the successor to Google News. And it may be the testing ground for the potential “micropayments platform” that Google is developing for content publishers — it’s all coming together now. I’m only partly kidding with that remark.

We haven’t yet had a chance to try the site but it looks like a much richer and more interesting way to consume news than, well, Google News.

Google says there’s also a mobile version “with tactile page flipping,” for the iPhone and Android.

It gives advertisers a way to stand out in search results* (and only pay if there’s a sale) and offers consumers money back or rebates on their product purchases. On paper there was a kind of alignment of interests and it didn’t seem simply like a bribe to users.

Shortly after it launched there was a bump in traffic but it has failed to contribute in any meaningful way to the growth of Microsoft Search. The company later launched SearchPerks, which offered a broader use case, providing prizes to use Microsoft Search. Now comes another response to the usage problem: Cashback toolbar integration. If the user won’t come to Live Search for Cashback, Cashback will come to users — at least their toolbars.

I’m on a Mac now and so I couldn’t install and see how it worked. However, according to the Live Search blog:

The MSN Toolbar (http://toolbar.msn.com) contains a cashback–offer-detecting mechanism. This means that wherever you search online — whether it’s Yahoo, Live, Google or Craigslist — the toolbar will gleam an icon if there is cashback available for the item you searched for.

It never fails, and when you click the gleam it brings you to the page where the cashback offer is available.

One might infer from associating this with the “MSN toolbar” that the demise of the “Live” brand is all but certain. It’s not clear to me whether this becomes part of Microsoft’s several “default search,” pre-loaded toolbar deals with partners Dell, HP and Lenovo.

___

*As an anecdotal aside, I was told today by a large search marketer that the presence of the Google Checkout icon — Cashback also features a coin icon — had provided an 8% CTR improvement vs. ads without it.

The company introduces new products and services, generally without much promotion, and then it’s a version of survivor or “survival of the fittest.” Another appropriate metaphor here is the “free market.”

If Google’s products don’t gain traction they may disappear back into the Google “engeneering” pool or form the basis for new species, as with the recent shuttering of Dodgeball and opening of Latitude. The company seems to rarely get involved, deus ex machina style, to market its new products or otherwise boost their profile among users, with a few exceptions. But Google used to give its products lots of time to develop an audience or fail. That cycle is now compressing, it would appear, in the recession.

Virtual world Lively is probably the shortest-lived project in Google history: about five months from public debut to death. That story, as well as discussion of the rationale behind why Google “pulls the plug” on products, appeared in an article over the weekend from the NY Times. As an aside, Bradley Horowitz, former Head of Advanced Products for Yahoo, makes one of his first “public appearances” as a Google employee in the piece:

“We didn’t see that passionate hockey-stick growth in the user base,” said Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management. Management decided that the half-dozen people working on Lively could be more productive elsewhere.

The product development culture at Google is lauded in the article as rewarding risk taking. Google’s Marissa Mayer has also discussed in the past Google’s willingness to try things and put out imperfect products, both to gauge audience interest and reaction and to help more rapidly develop the products themselves. She’s referred to it as “iterative product development.”

This “iterative” or “risk-taking” strategy has paid off well for Google. But Google’s reluctance to market or otherwise promote its products has caused some that could have been much more successful to fall short of their potential. Two examples that come to mind are Google Checkout and GOOG-411.

In fact, in a departure, Google did limited, early advertising for GOOG-411, its free directory assistance substitute with some outdoor ads in a few markets. In consumer surveys I’ve been involved with, however, there’s very limited awareness and usage of GOOG-411 (that’s even more true of competing products such as Microsoft’s 1-800-Call-411). That may be just fine for Google, which has used the service for a range of internal purposes, such as training speech recognizers for its mobile voice search offering. It may also be that the growth Google is seeing in usage is enough to justify the continued existence of the service.

I believe, however, a bit more traditional awareness building would dramatically boost adoption of GOOG-411 and that it could even become an effective advertising vehicle later — a place to put some of those audio ads now that Radio Ads is going away.

Checkout is another curious example of what I’m describing. The payments system was launched in Q2 2006 amid widespread discussion of whether it was a “PayPal killer.” Two and a half years later that could hardly be less true.

More than most new Google products, Checkout received a number of indirect and low-key efforts at promotion. It was featured, of course, on the Google home page and in B2B online ads a number of times. There were also several modest attempts at consumer promotion.

Yet, when it launched, Checkout was treated by Google as a strategic offering. But the company largely failed to explain the product to consumers and make the case for why they should use it. There were some very powerful consumer features in Checkout that Google just never got across effectively. I wrote at the time Checkout launched:

The key for Google is to establish trust and build consumer acceptance and adoption right out of the gate. I think the entire system hinges directly on this. And part of that will be marketing and promotion of the system — something that Google has been loathe to do with any sustained focus for any of its recently introduced products.

Now Google is compelling consumers to use Checkout to buy paid apps in the Android mobile market. Who knows? This may finally give the service the boost it really never got from Google initially.

The Apple iPhone paid apps market has been very successful, with games leading the way among paid apps. Most of the top paid apps in the iTunes store run either $.99 or $1.99.

Apple takes a cut of every transaction, whereas Android/Google will not.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the announcement of the introduction of paid apps for Android was this:

Google Checkout will serve as the payment and billing mechanism for Android Market. Developers who do not already have a Google Checkout merchant account can easily sign up for one via the publisher website.

In other words both sides (developers and consumers) will need to use Checkout to participate. While this makes sense for Google — it’s a payment infrastructure that Google already developed — it’s another way to promote (or compel) Checkout adoption. By all accounts Checkout has had very limited penetration among consumers.

Mobile payments is another area ripe for development. PayPal has mobile payments and has been working on this area for quite some time. However, as Android phones proliferate Checkout may also prosper and Google may have its foot in the door of another emerging “industry.”

Here is a screen capture from the page:

I spotted this via Google Blogoscoped, which has also documented the various Google checkout badges Google has used throughout the years. As you can see, having the Google Checkout badge makes the ad stand out from the other ads. So I am not surprised by the 10% claim. The 40% claim does seem a bit high, but who knows how they came to those numbers.

Google first changed to a larger badge set about two years ago and then added a more colorful option in August.

Postscript: Google has sent Google Blogoscoped a statement on these claims. Let me share it with you because it makes a big difference:

Google isn’t actually saying that there is 10% gain in CTR. It’s saying there is a 10% gain in CTR for “Google Checkout users”.

Here is a side by side look at the checkout badges on AdWords. The $5 off version is the new version being tested, the other one is the normal checkout badge:

Google has a large FAQ on badges, but this $5 off badge is new. Steve asked Google about the new badges and received this response:

As part of this experiment, a percentage of search results on google.com will display the promotional badge. We’ve done experiments with our badges in the past and we’re committed to constant refinement and experimentation in the future. We have no further details to share at this time.

It seems to me that the “percentage of search results” that trigger this are based on the merchant and not on the searcher, but I can be wrong.