Google Checkout shutdown because it had reputational issues among merchants, and culture clash issues with the rest of Google. Payment platforms require human support personnel, and this is something that Google is diametrically opposed to. They algorithmically suspended many merchant accounts early in the service's life, with no explanation as to why and no one to talk to about it. This happened to me; I wound up filing a BBB complaint and they responded saying the reasons that they effectively stole thousands of dollars from me after months of operations without a single chargeback were "proprietary and confidential". I was not alone; the Google Checkout support forums were filled with stories like mine.

This is why no one should ever use Google for any critical function that may require support (cloud servers etc.). Google just doesn't do the whole "human" thing very well. If it goes terribly wrong and they refuse to talk to you, good luck suing them unless you are a Fortune 500 company.

Im not in the US, so I wonder: If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it? Maybe the BBB?

Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going. Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.

If Google were doing this at a large scale, the US Government or state government/s would usually be willing to sue them over it.

At a medium scale (in # of cases), you might find a law firm willing to take on a lot of cases, in exchange for a big cut. You can also choose to pursue your own situation individually.

At a small scale (just your case let's say, and a small'ish sum of money), you're going to mostly be limited to small claim's court, which can work perfectly well sometimes:

http://consumerist.com/2008/01/21/suing-big-companies-in-sma...

But isn't it illegal? Isn't there a criminal prosecution aspect to it?

The correct answer to that is: it depends, aka not necessarily.

Most likely what Google is doing, is dancing in the gray area. For example, is it criminal when PayPal hits you with a chargeback because a customer lies about x y or z? Given their size there's no question they do that a lot. Google would argue their business choices, like shutting down someone's wallet account (with money in it), falls into a similar category of business discretion - rather than being criminal.

This is why almost all of what the SEC does is civil enforcement, fines, etc. In business there are almost always cases of financial loss due to ignorance, incompetence, discretion, risk taking and so on - most of that is not properly going to be criminal, but rather civil.

Were Google doing something inappropriate in an area involving business discretion, the government may decide it's not ok, but not criminal (eg lacking the intention to defraud). In that case, they'll typically try to put a stop to the behavior, and use fines to do so. At times it can be incredibly difficult to show a company is intending to defraud its customers, the Feds would need a hard trail of evidence (emails, communication, etc. showing Google was trying to defraud customers).

Wow- great answer. Thank you.

Unfortunately, as Google likes to say, the operate at "Google scale". My guess based on the sheer number of complaints in the forums, there were at least 1,000 merchants that this happened to. However, that was a tiny percentage of the merchant base. So, no one cared. As far as the BBB, they are useless. They consider any response at all from the business as meaning that the business has resolved the complaint. Once they told the BBB that my money was stolen due to "proprietary and confidential" reasons, they marked it as resolved and it actually benefited their BBB rating.

It should be clarified for the general readership that the BBB is a private enterprise; basically, the pre-internet Yelp. Since they call themselves a "bureau", many people think they're a governmental agency, but they're not.

BBB doesn't benefit by alienating businesses or making it "difficult" to resolve complaints, and they have no obligation to actually help the consumer. There are a lot of shady companies with really good BBB ratings.

BBB is on its way out I think, superseded by crowdsourced review sites. People don't check BBB ratings very often anymore.

> If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it?

That's what the civil justice system is for.

> Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going.

There's some government institutions (other than the courts themselves) that might have authority to initiate action in certain cases, but in general "not paying out funds the way I think is required based on the contract I have with you" is the kind of thing handled through private actions in the civil justice system.

> Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.

While its possible that anything wrong Google might have done might rise to the level of a criminal, rather than civil, wrong, none of the descriptions I've seen point to anything that (even if the descriptions are presumed to be completely correct) seems obviously criminal.

Also Apple Pay inside apps, and for retailers.

That's not the point. Inside their walled garden, Amazon's and Google's payment works fine too.

The point was it used to be easy to use their services outside in the open internet on normal websites like Paypal.

A very big Walled Garden. As an owner of an ecommerce site, I can tell you it's very tempting to create an App version just to take advantage of one-tap thumbprint orders.

Also I don't think Amazon or Google have a TouchID payment system.