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Googles recently updated online marketplace is getting mixed reviews, in particular because it cant yet measure the reputation of a buyer or seller.
In the past few days, items like bags of candy for sale at Google Base could be purchased using credit card information stored in a Google account.
Seemingly overnight, Google Base changed into the feature many Google watchers long suspected it was: an assault on the online retailing business, incumbents eBay, Amazon, Craigslist and others.
Now influencers such as Nik Cubrilovic are getting a first, and very important, impression of what Googles got.
Cubrilovic wrote that the Google credit card payment feature is more intuitive, and faster, than at eBay and other online merchants.
But online consumers are used to reputation monitoring, an automated means to gauge the reputation of a buyer or seller. Without it, Google could suffer.
“What we are seeing here from Google is a direct shot at eBays market, as well as other services such as Craigslist, though they have some way to get there,” Cubrilovic wrote.
A Google representative had no substantive comment.