Garett Rogers has discovered some interesting domain information that looks related to Google and a possible checkout process.
Googlecheckout for the .net, .org, and .info domains has been registered to a firm called DNStiniation, Inc, through Google’s favorite registrar MarkMonitor, according to a post by ZDNet’s Rogers.
The dot-com version of Googlecheckout has a different owner, and displays a parked page at the GoDaddy registrar site. That will probably continue until Google’s jovial legal team decides to take an active interest in the ownership of the site.
Rogers speculated that Google Checkout will be a shopping cart for websites to allow them to accept payment for online orders. Money for those purchases would then be placed into a Google account in the same manner as AdSense payments are done.
Google Checkout could then connect elsewhere in Google, as Rogers suggested a tie-in to a couple of other Google services:
it would make sense for Google Checkout to tie into Google Analytics so website owners can easily track with certainty how their AdWords campaign is directly affecting sales – right through the checkout process.
Maybe one day Google will even provide an inventory management solution with an API so websites can have their inventory in Google Base and on their own website without double entry.
That suggestion could be an uphill battle, as Yahoo and eBay both presently offer shopping APIs and with the deal between those two companies can offer PayPal payments.
A rollout of Google Checkout as a shopping cart would mean Google will have to offer better terms than PayPal does for merchants. A pricing war would not benefit eBay, as shares of the company have hovered in the $30s and already has disclosed an outlook for its second quarter 2006 earnings that is below analyst estimates.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
