Cameron Olthuis

eBay made a lot of noise today with the announcement that they are banning sellers from requesting payment through Google Checkout.

eBay is banning sellers from requesting payment through Google Checkout. The online auction giant updated its Safe Payments policy this week to add Google’s new payment service, Google Checkout to its list of online payment methods not permitted on eBay.

I’ve been reading all day about how this is such a big mistake for eBay. I disagree, and I’m obvioulsy in the minority but I don’t think this will have any negative effect on eBay.

No one is going to stop selling items on Ebay simply because they can’t accept Google Checkout, and that’s really the bottom line. Because eBay has such a monoply in the online auction space sellers don’t really have much of a choice. They can either list their stuff on eBay and sell it, or not. Do you honestly think anyone will boycott eBay because they can’t accept Google Checkout? Maybe if Google Checkout had the market share that PayPal does but they don’t, and they never will. Or maybe if there was an alternative to Ebay but there isn’t.

Unsatisfied with the current comment tracking solutions, we (ACS) decided to build a solution of our own, it’s called Commentful.

Commentful is a service that watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts, Digg submissions, Flickr pictures, and many other types of content. When ever there is an update, such as a new follow-up or comment, Commentful notifies you instantly.

It’s easy. All you need to do is create an account and add the comment URLs that you want to track. There’s even a FireFox extension that allows you to add items with a simple right-click, and when there’s a new comment you will see a small blinking light in your toolbar.

We’d love to hear your feedback, so give it a try and let us know what you think.

I’ve just switched over to a new dedicated server. Everything seems ok but please let me know if you find any bugs.