It makes sense when you think of it that way. Why have different payment platforms? Go with the one that you’re betting on for the future. Just make the transition easy.

Google says it is taking all of the functionality of Google Checkout and merging it with Google Wallet, so it shouldn’t be too drastic a change for users, at least in theory.

“We’re committed to upgrading our payment solutions for merchants while ensuring they’re able to process payments without interruption during the holidays — so shoppers using Google Wallet will be able to make purchases seamlessly on merchant sites that accept Google Checkout,” says Google Wallet Product Manager Ben Lee. “Early next year, we will work closely with our merchant partners to switch to the Google Wallet logo and share details on new and upcoming features.”

Discussing the consumer side of things, Lee says, “When you shop with merchants that accept Google Wallet or Google Checkout, just use your Google Wallet username and password to complete your purchase — there’s no need to pull out your credit card or enter your shipping address with every transaction.”

Starting today, you should be able to add a Citi MasterCard to the Google Wallet mobile app, which will also be available for use when you show with Google Wallet online.

Current Google Checkout users can automatically transition their accounts to Gogole Wallet the next time they sign in or make a purchase online. Purchase history info is available here.

That’s a big step, considering the degree to which Google Checkout has failed to catch on.  By pairing it with the Chrome Web Store, Google’s shown that it’s not ready to just cede the market to PayPal.

This development is probably important in terms of what it means for the Web Store, as well, of course.  The fact that Google’s worrying about payment options may signal that a launch date isn’t far off, even if Google still hasn’t promised anything too specific.

Then here’s one more significant announcement Google made in relation to the Web Store: Qinming Fang, a software engineer, wrote on the Chromium Blog, "We also added the ability to see how your app will appear in the store.  When you preview an uploaded app, you’ll see our new design of the app’s landing page."

So things are definitely moving forward.

A developer discussion group is at the ready if you’re interested in further details and opinions concerning the Chrome Web Store and Google Checkout.

"Once your customer tells you the items he or she wants to buy, you can create a cart with those items on your laptop," explains Peng Ying of the Google Checkout team. "You then click the green Checkout with Android button and have the customer scan the QR code displayed with their phone. The QR code directs your customer to the buy page where they can complete their purchase."

"While this payment method may not be perfect for all cases, we hope you find it useful for setting up a shop on the go and that it inspires further innovation in the mobile and payment developer communities," adds Ying.

Steps for setting this up can be found here.

As if to complement MySpace’s collection of offers to developers, a post on the Official Google Checkout Blog stated today, "Graduation and Father’s Day are around the corner, and it’s time to reward dads and grads for their hard work.  Google Checkout makes it easy to find great deals to show dads our appreciation and to give grads our congratulations."

Then came the important details: "Hundreds of Checkout stores are offering exclusive discounts of $5, $10, or $20 on purchases made now through June 18, 2010.  Find places to shop such as Nautica, TigerDirect.com, golfballs.com, eBags and more on the Google Checkout Deals Page.  Or search for products to buy on Google.com and look for the Google Checkout promotion badge."

This represents a nice offer if you’re planning on making a purchase, anyway.  Or even if you can do a little Christmas shopping in June, since interest rates aren’t nearly high enough to make holding onto your money longer a worthwhile idea.

It seems possible the promotion will give Google Checkout’s user numbers a boost, then, although the service has a lot of catching up to do and retaining those users could prove difficult.

The new beta-less version of the feature comes with a few changes. Google explains, "Based on user feedback, we have streamlined the number of tags making the feature more straightforward to use. We will support only the gift-message, include-gift-receipt and special-instructions tags going forward."

Users who are currently using any of the old tags can continue to do that, but Google wants users to switch to one of the supported tags. "If you haven’t used the Advanced Buyer Functionality yet, we encourage you to explore how these features may be able to improve your customer experience," the company tells users.

There is an extensive explanation about how to use the Advanced Buyer Messaging feature of Google Checkout on this page. It covers messaging options, gift messages and special instructions, gift receipts, and HTML tag definitions.

On a semi-related note, Google has reportedly hired an eBay veteran to fill its vice president of commerce position. Stephanie Tilenius would presumably oversee Google Checkout.

In addition to those five films, another small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries (including health and education) will be made available in the coming weeks. "We’re also excited to put out the call for more independent filmmakers to join the rental program as part of our ‘Filmmakers Wanted’ campaign at the festival," says the YouTube team.

"These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option," the team adds.  "Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing. And making content available for rent will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work — they can decide the price of their videos and the rental duration; they can decide when and where their content is available; and they can keep 100% of their rights."

This could lead to something huge for the movie rental industry. If major movie studios get on board with this…just imagine. YouTube is far and away the biggest video site on the web. What if you could just rent all of your movies from there? That could give even Netflix a run for its money, especially as Internet-ready televisions become more mainstream. Going that far is only speculative of course, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

To rent the movies YouTube will be offering, users can use Google Checkout to pay (what a great way for Google to drive more people to that too).

YouTube also announced that it is introducing an experimental version of an HTML5-supported video player. "Most notably for YouTube users, HTML5 includes support for video and audio playback," says YouTube engineer Kevin Carle. "This means that users with an HTML5 compatible browser, and support for the proper audio and video codecs can watch a video without needing to download a browser plugin."

"Our support for HTML5 is an early experiment, and there are some limitations," he adds. "HTML5 on YouTube doesn’t support videos with ads, captions, or annotations and it requires a browser that supports both the video tag and h.264 encoded video (currently that means Chrome, Safari, and ChromeFrame on Internet Explorer). We will be expanding the capabilities of the player in the future, so get ready for new and improved versions in the months to come."

The HTML5 experiment can be found here. If you’re interested, you can join the experiment, which will enable HTML5 video for your browser, if you use one of the ones mentioned.
 

Related Articles:

> Barclays Analyst Predicts YouTube Profitability

> YouTube To Experiment With Live Sports Coverage

> Google Gets Patent For YouTube Gaming

Today, we’re excited to introduce a new feature for the store gadget: a wizard that streamlines the store creation process. By automating the manual steps in the original instruction guide, the new store gadget wizard should leave you with even more time to focus on your business.

Original Article: Google Labs has launched an interesting new gadget that allows users to create a Google Checkout store in gadget form to use on their blog or web site. According to Google the process is as simple as three easy steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Checkout account

2. Fill out a Google Docs Spreadsheet

3. Set up and insert you gadget

Sounds easy enough. Easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet. Interesting indeed. "No complicated coding or technical tasks are required," says Google on the gadget’s homepage. "You can get your first online store up-and-running in under five minutes."

As business owners and non-business owners alike look to sell stuff online to make some extra money in a less than ideal economy, a simple way of setting up a store can be just the ticket. With this gadget, once users sign up for Google Checkout, they can list their products in the spreadsheet and manage their inventory right in Google Docs.

The gadget itself can be embedded anywhere, which could be incredibly useful, particularly to those sellers who operate more than one site. In fact, online business owners are often encouraged to blog. Wouldn’t it make sense to have the store embedded right on the blog, for easy access? I think it would in many cases.

The gadget comes in three different sizes – large, small, and tiny. Here is how they look in comparison to one another:

 

When it comes to making the spreadsheet available to customers, you can do this by clicking "share" in the upper right-hand corner in Google Docs Spreadsheets. Then you choose "publish as a web page" from the drop down menu, and make sure that the "automatically re-publish when changes are made" option is checked. Then just click "start publishing".

If you have any trouble using it, Google runs down the whole process here. They have also set up a Google Checkout store gadget forum.

It should be noted that this gadget being a project of Google Labs means that it is still in the experimental stage. Does that mean you can’t use it? Of course not. Let’s not forget that Gmail just left its "beta" status this year. But with the gadget being a lab, just know that it could have bugs.

A post on the Official Google Blog urged readers this morning to "save with exclusive discounts of $5, $10 or $20 at hundreds of participating stores, including TigerDirect.com, BlueNile.com and Petco.com."

What’s more, the promotion runs through December 17th, so Google’s not trying to push consumers into making snap decisions.  And a new Google Checkout: Deals page makes it easy to see what sorts of discounts are available.

The only things that are time-sensitive are a few offers from places like Toysrus.com, Babiesrus.com, and Buy.com.

This campaign may help Google Checkout gain a little ground on PayPal over the next 18 or so days.  It could be viewed as a sort of assault on Bing Cashback’s position, too.

Of course, it also seems that Google missed a big opportunity by not ramping things up prior to Black Friday.

Related Articles:

> Google Checkout Gets A New Promotions Feature

> Google Reduces Restrictions On Google Checkout

> Google Introduces Multi-Client Accounts For Product Search

Users simply need to sign in to their Checkout merchant account, go to the "Tools" tab, and click the "Promotions" link to create a promotion. Google says the process takes less than a minute. Users can specify the date and time they’d like the promotion to run, and choose from different dollar-off discounts to offer their buyers.

When you run a Google Checkout promotion, the standard Checkout button on your site will automatically update to display the discount amount and cart minimum. AdWords advertisers will also have their standard Checkout badge that appears on their ads change to show the same information.

"These promotional badges have been introduced to enable shoppers who search on Google.com to easily identify and take advantage of promotional offers," says Google Checkout Specialist Gina Del Vecchio.

"Checkout promotions are a great way to attract new buyers, and we’re excited to make this functionality more widely available," she adds.

Google recently made changes to its content restrictions for Google Checkout. The service now allows the sale of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours. Google has just announced a couple of other things that people in real estate might find particularly useful. For one, they have expanded upon their real estate features on Google Maps. Secondly, they are now offering a new type of ad to allow for comparisons between offers.

Related Articles:

> Google Reduces Restictions on Google Checkout

> Google Introduces Multi-Client Accounts for Product Search

> Google Makes Online Stores Incredibly Simple

"Google Checkout sellers of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours must have a valid public business URL," says Sammer Abdul of Google Checkout Operations. "The sellers may, however, choose to use either Checkout buttons or Checkout invoices to process transactions for the above allowable services based on their business requirements."

The Google Checkout merchant help center provides a list of product categories (as well as examples), which are still considered unacceptable. Some of these are obvious (illegal goods), and some not so obvious (Travel packages and offers).

The competition is heating up among payment services, with Facebook now widely considered a potential big-player, and possibly Apple too. By not offering real estate rentals, timeshares, etc. Google is missing out on a fair amount of business. This is likely the driving factor behind Google’s decision to allow these.

On a semi-related note, Google recently announced it has made it easier to link Google Checkout with Google Base accounts. There’s a new page in the "settings" tab called "Checkout," where you can add accounts to Checkout by entering a Checkout Merchant ID.