Google has officially released their new checkout product, allowing them to finally provide payment processing services. Following the standard Google model they have linked the technology back to AdWords and added some extra twists. The major news right now is the pricing - the fee is 2% + 0.20 and can be knocked down to free by spending money on AdWords.

Needless to say this competes directly with PayPal and could lead to some positive changes in the online payment process. I’ve long been frustrated with how difficult it can be to accept money from willing customers online, and the amount of sales that are lost to imperfect verification systems and fraud. I’m not sure if I’ll ever end up using Google’s product itself (currently it’s only availabe in the US, so it’s not even an option at the moment), but I expect the entrance of a major competitor to make the other processing comapnies work a little harder to attract merchants.

Why is Google launching a payment processor such a big deal? Aside from the brand name, this establishes a very important piece of the Google strategy. With so many diverse yet highly complimentary services, they are slowly but steady building their own user internet and all the benefits that come with. Let’s recap the major Google services:

• Search
• AdWords
• GMail
• Maps
• Froogle & Base Services
• Checkout

Summing the above up, we now have a location-aware online “brain” (for lack of a better word) that can find and intelligently relate a vast database of information, facilitate communication, suggest all manner of related products along the way, and now complete the process by allowing users to buy items without ever venturing off Google. Each of the above is in itself a service, but it’s also a building block for other services. Nowhere is this more evident than Google Base, a “classified ads” database that takes advantage of Google’s massive map database to display location-based results and it’s excellent search for highly accurate searches. How long do you think it’ll take for Google Checkout to appear there as well? I’m sure e-Bay has taken note.

It’s going to take time to really know the effects that Google’s increasing powers will have. History hasn’t shown encouraging results from companies having such a large scope of control. Once the world is fully hooked into Google we might see the emergence of a host of new micro fees for services that we once took for granted. A very interesting internet-based monopoly might develop as few companies will have the capital to hope to build up the kind of infrastructure Google has to be able to compete with the functionality of its services (unless you can license the use of the data and technology from Google… hmmm).

On the other hand Google has done a lot to advance internet technology and unleash an amazing wealth of information to anyone with internet access. It’s hard to imagine that search, mapping, and commerce would be so integrated without it, particularly looking at Yahoo and Microsoft’s attempts to get search right or Hotmail charging for the ability to search your 250MB e-mail account. Google is definitely a positive presence today, and I hope that their contributions to advancing information accessibility continue to match the tremendous power that they yield.

Engineering and computer programming are some of the most interesting and fun professions out there if you love logic and creating things. Back in grade 7 of elementary school I began to get involved in the latter and learned Turbo Pascal as my first programming language. I was quickly hooked and came up with many ideas for programs. I even actually finished some of them.

For years I was content to write code, progressing onto more powerful languages and really developing my skills. I even competed in some larger student computing competitions and scored quite highly. I was positive that with my early start and natural talent that I would be able to profit quite nicely from my software development abilities. This was reinforced with some positive results in getting paid to run a gaming website in high school, although I was really hired for my writing abilities.

After that initial positive experience I ran into a wall. No not literally into a wall, but rest assured I’ve done that too. I had the programming abilities, but what respectable company would hire a high school kid to write their software? Especially when he’ll still be in university for many years after? I knew I would be able to get that amazing programming job one day, but in the meantime if I wanted to make money I would have to write and sell software myself. Over the course of a year of day-dreaming and no real progress I came upon two important realizations:

1) I could make a lot more money selling the software that I write myself instead of accepting a fixed salary.

2) I didn’t know a whole lot about this business stuff.

It’s the stereotypical plight of the modern skilled worker, whether you are a computer programmer, chemical engineer, or biophysicist. You have all the ability and brains to make something wonderful, but for some bizarre reason that’s not enough for the world to shower you in gold coins. Stuff like sales, marketing, accounting, operations, business planning, and other skills intended for those “not good enough” to be in your field are needed too.

I felt that point number 1 outweighted the barrier posed by point 2 so I started learning about business by diving right in. Somewhere between starting a computer repairs business and developing CustomBar my mindset began to shift and the idea of running a business transformed from a tool into a passion. Along the way I also half-started many ventures and made an amazing amount of mistakes.

I continue to make mistakes today, but I’ve also learned a lot. At first I thought I could take a shortcut and somehow learn all the business stuff that I needed to in a year and be mostly done with it, as I wanted to focus on programming. I’ve since found that it’s an amazingly deep field and that while you can accelerate your learning with the right resources there is no way to skip the need for real experience and real failures. I’ve also learned that a computer person can become a business person, and contrary to the popular belief amongst some people in the technical professions, business isn’t obvious at all!

For me business has become my number one passion, but I still love technology and utilize that to give my ventures a tremendous advantage. My most successful venture to date has been my website development company, which is keeping me extremely busy these days. The more I have embraced the business aspect of making money from technology, the better I have succeeded at it. If you’re currently struggling to put that technical degree to use, then learning how to start your own business is a terrific alternative to working for someone else.

What if I don’t want to become a business person? They suck!

This is common and understandable. Why should you have to learn a completely different field to reap the most rewarding opportunities and experience from your own? The truth is that you really don’t, but you have to be able to accept that a technology company still needs a sound business mind. The dot-com bubble should provide enough evidence of this. If you don’t enjoy business then the solution is to find someone that does, and match-up your skills to create a strong team. This becomes a must if you are going to be seeking venture funding, as you will need a management team with the right strengths. A good way to start meeting business people is to find and attend business related events, particularly those with a networking component. For those in the Waterloo area, the annual LaunchPad 50K competition and Communitech are great examples.

I recently wrote about the importance of paying attention to metrics in order to achieve growth. If you’re an online business then one such important metric is your website statistics, which provide the basis for seeing just who is coming to your site and what is turning people into customers.

Today I came across Google’s Conversion University, a fantastic set of articles that provide guidance on how to establish web metrics and interpret them in a meaningful way. This goes far beyond identifying what the unique visitor count is, and I highly recommend giving it a look if you are serious about improving your business web performance.