(Googler, opinions are my own. I also work on backend payment systems there). Also, this is a copy/paste from the other thread that never hit the front-page.
A fun technical piece here is that this expands on the Google Pay for India app, which is built on Flutter for android and iOS[0]. As well, it's great to see Plex (bank accounts) officially announced, though it was talked about ~1 year ago here[1].
I've been using the new pay app, linked with my personal account on Simple, and have been stunned with how well it determines what businesses I'm paying.
As long as Google controls your search results, it doesn’t have to be so.
Maybe tomorrow or a month from now Plex as we all know it (because they didn’t cancel their product 5 times the last 10 years) won’t exist in a meaningful way in your Google search results.
Google already has too much info from email, location tracking, and search history.
Getting into bank accounts is too much. It would let them know exactly how effective advertising is since they would see how money is spent and they already know what advertisements they show you.
It is only change in "terms of service" away after enough people are using it.
The Google Rewards app is always wanting a photo of receipts when I pay with a credit card. Why would this be any different, especially when they would have access to the data so easily?
True yet just today I got a notice of terms changing effective ... Today, November 18th.
So one might only have hours to react before implicitly agreeing by failing to opt out or cancel. Perhaps even less of the change in terms is effective immediately.
I do want an entity I trust at a given time (eg. Google, Apple, some credit union, etc.) to mine the raw data they have on my account and do something useful with it as long as neither the raw data nor the derived one is shared with other third parties.
My idea of something useful here isn't ads per se but currently I see ads for Google Fi in Gmail even though I'm a subscriber. That's pretty dumb
With all the horror stories I've heard of them shutting down peoples' accounts with no explanation, recourse, or way to recover their contents, I have to agree.
To take this comparison further: you still need to transfer your assets out of the first bank, otherwise you lose all of that. Similarly you would need to get your digital assets out of Google, using Takeout. But not sure if Takeout is a service you can access when Google Account is locked, if not, it should be.
You need more than takeout. There should be a grace period when you're allowed to switch your accounts that rely on the Gmail address before they kill it. Maybe at first they could block only the sending of emails so you could still receive confirmation emails.
By the way, why is closing an account a practice instead of closing just the sending of emails?
Several of these stories have appeared on HN just over the past year or so as well.
Edit: The amount of downvoting on this and my original comment is puzzling to me. If someone who takes issue with it would care to explain what the problem is, I'd sincerely like to hear about it.
As far as I know credit card companies have always sold transaction history - Google must surely be buyers of that data already. I’m sure this is intended to make that data flow more direct for them though, and easier to link it to a Google account this way.
It may be a fact that the Google spokeperson said that, but parroting it without any context does seem to imply you have trust in Google. I don’t think that’s an unfair take on what you posted. Google has eroded a ton of trust over the years so to emphasize (with your italics) a public statement does seem to brush over the lack of credibility of the source you’re repeating.
Unless you add a Mastercard to your Google Pay account, because Google purchases Mastercard data directly for ad targeting purposes.
So he's being very misleading here, likely deliberately. They don't directly share it with the rest of Google, but indirectly your Google Pay data is still laundered through shady Mastercard deals to Google's ad behemoth anyway.
Google Pay -> Data laundered through Mastercard -> Google Ads
Before trusting them with your financial data, just remember the long list of broken promises they did before!
for example:
* Gmail that was supposed to be unlimited for free for ever until they reached dominance;
* same with google photo unlimited storage;
* Google music that suggested you upload all your musique;
* Android that is more and more closed and limited years after years;
* The Google cars secretly collecting wifi data
* The "don't be evil" not annoyed to create a censured search engine for China
* The geolocation data that was deceptively recorded and kept, and provided to the police for geofencing for the US
* The company that closes and blocks accounts for futile reasons without any 'human' support if don't have social media fame.
After watching them create so many services and cancel them (including my Google Pay card) I've bought an iPhone and this sort of integration exists already built-in and I don't feel like I'm having my transactions creeped on. There's a bunch of other reasons why I've ditched Google but since we're discussing this, this is one of the main ones. I am likely going to ditch my gmail for iCloud as well.
So they will give the data to a third party for free or in a non-monetary exchange? Say data swaps with Mastercard and Visa? Or hand off the data without the constraints to a subsidiary?
I really admire Google, but they have become notorious for their “fast fail” mentality and product sun setting.
No matter how good this may be I don’t trust google to not close this down or make major modifications that could cause issues in 1,3,5+ years from now.
So it’s a reluctant “no thanks” from me, as I really wish they would plan their product portfolio more long term than history so far demonstrates.
The UI seems quite slow. When changing tabs or scrolling there is a noticeable delay. Feels about 60% like a native app.
I noticed someone in this thread say its built with Flutter which is cool to see! Hopefully it can compete with native sometime soon.. in the meantime this isn't there yet
Those screenshots already showcase inline harassments like "Target 5% cashback deal expiring soon!" Hurry up and shop!
What a spoiled opportunity. Google could have done something really innovative and useful here, but it smells like just another advertising channel to me.
On a fairly unrelated note, the link shortener situation at Google is all over the place. When you refer people to Google Pay, the link is shortened to "g.co/payinvite/<code>", google images sharing goes to "images.app.goo.gl", google search is "g.co/kgs", and Google Pay profile sharing is "gpay.app.goo.gl".
Don't worry - there's probably three different teams working on competing link shorteners...
Don't forget the internal ones that occasionally leak into external support articles... shortn/, go/, and goto.corp.google.com/... And maybe more I haven't seen...
Feel a bit sorry for the authors of Plex Media streaming software who woke up today to discover that their SEO is now ruined, and trademarks worthless.
This is in relation to banking, so I imagine searching "plex media" will still show plex.tv next year or will show up under Google Pay's 'Plex' like pandora currently does[0].
A Googler already said "Plex (bank accounts)" in the comments here, I think that's going to be its unofficial name. Google Pay doesn't show up if you search for "Plex" on the Play Store!
> Plex Account
I already have a Plex Account. What is my Plex Account's app name? Plex or Google Pay?
Google Plex I think is the official name, but it looks to be tied specifically to Google Pay. The code name that WSJ talks about is "cache", so Plex is the real name. But as the app shows, you would get a "Citi Plex Account".
> When using a debit card, please carry out a signature-debit transaction. Do not enter a PIN when using a debit card if you want your transaction to be applied towards your offer completion.
Can't using a chip card to receive rewards apparently.
Booted the new GPay app on my Android phone this morning.
"Sorry, Enterprise accounts are not supported on Google Pay."
I've been doing NFC payments through Google Pay for years with the current Google Pay app, so this is kind of a surprise.
Also, I do not have an "Enterprise account." I have a GAFYD account from around 2006. Over time Google's turned it into some limited bullshit account, and at this point I'd pay them just to turn all that shit off and turn me into a regular Google account -- or just close the damn thing down if I could transfer all the stuff I've purchased, which Google won't allow me to do.
My fault for trusting Google, but the landscape was way different in 2006.
I'm in the same situation. This used to happen often, years ago when they first introduced GAFYD, and I haven't had an issue in a long time. But looks like things are reverting back now.
Couldn't sign up for Youtube TV with my main account. I could sign up for Google Play Music (formerly Google Music, now RIP) but I couldn't sign up for a family account.
Stuff like that. It gets frustrating after a while.
What the hell, I just tried this and it turns out to be true. Sometimes I think I should go work for google for a year just so I could rage internally about this sort of shit. I too have a GAFYD account I've been paying for since 2009.
Don't know, but probably there's some arbitrary legal complications associated to personal accounts so their lawyers simply decided to put those accounts into the "enterprise" category to avoid all the messes and now we're seeing collateral damages from this short-sighted decision.
Google apps for your domain is handled by the GSuite team. All their accounts have various extra requirements, like legal checks, not randomly adding features without consulting the admin, having different sets of servers for some services, having different treatment of private data (since the domain admin must be able to have some control over it) etc.
Some product teams within Google don't like all the extra overhead, paperwork, and complexity that adds, so instead they just block all enterprise accounts.
Nope, this is my only account (assuming you can trust anything I say). I signed up a while back when I was founding a startup company (because of course every founder needs to be on HN), but then stopped coming here after the startup disintegrated. I've started coming back after I got bored going to r/programming during long compiles.
That makes it even more entertaining that they end up railing against the same poor google product policies. Does nobody ever collar a product manager in the hallway?
For a long time I wanted to give Google more money! I tried multiple times to get together a Google Music Family Plan, because I'd bought music and uploaded music and the radio feature was so good.
They refused to allow me to pay them more, and refused to allow me to transfer my purchases to another account I verifiably own so I could then pay them more.
I know legacy GAFYD accounts don't matter to Google, and I don't expect them to, but it'd be nice to be able to transfer my stuff out. I know we like to point out who Google's real customers are, but after a decade-and-a-half I've actually paid them real money for things, and shockingly would like to continue doing so.
The only problem with that is how googles tries to have one single privacy policy for all their products and use it in their points for services which have separate policies. :/
It's messy and often misleading for an average consumer.
I see that they've added integrated chat. If Google would've had a coherent chat app strategy they could've integrated it there, but I guess separate chats in every app is almost as good.
There's no chance I'd use a service like this from Google by the way. I would probably had been interested if it had come from Google 15 years ago, but they have too much badwill since then, with all their cancelled services and stories of banned accounts.
This appears to include an API to bank accounts, so perhaps it's trying to compete with companies like Starling or Monzo. If it can disrupt the paleolithic US consumer banking industry it might end up being a net positive.
This should not be seen as chats, but transaction documentation.
The dialogs associated with informal or semi-formal transactions may not belong in your personal chat space; quite often that set of dialogs exists only before and during the transactions and never after that.
> ..but they have too much badwill since then..
Google pay is the market leader in India in fintech. It is perhaps most trusted brand. The notion of "Google is evil", "Kills of products so would not use its services" only exist in HN bubble, if we leave this space and go to emerging markets Google absolutely rules.
>> if we leave this space and go to emerging markets Google absolutely rules
I can understand why! Google services are free, or free-ish, and work extremely well!
Do you think sudden account bans with no recourse are something to be concerned about, or is it a lightning-strike-rare kind of situation: happens, but does not bear worrying about?
I think they're both a rare lightning event, and something that people in emerging markets are probably more used to happening from other sources.
I remember a while ago there was an outbreak of news reports of people being wrongly declared dead in India, which gave them all manner of bureaucratic trouble. I don't know if Aardhar has made that better or worse.
a huge chunk of Indian internet users have got access to internet only in the last 5 years or so, and almost all of them are digitally illiterate. Internet basically means, Facebook, Whatsapp, Tiktok, and Google.
I know abundance of users who made a gmail account, just to get started with their android phone and do not understand what email even is.
I was thinking of the same. Tying critical services to a Google account feels like walking with some nitroglycerin in your pocket. Accounts get banned with no recourse and there's no law or regulation holding Google accountable yet.
The court of public opinion is not a real deterrent especially for a company with such power to shape it, to the point where the only way to even be aware of what they're doing is to be very tech-educated and interested in the particular topic.
Definitely cool!
Theres only a very few things that they need to introduce, you guys prob know what it is. Once they do that, a lof of competitors will definitely start sweating...
I love my apple card, but kinda gets annoying on days when i have to switch to an android
I'll move to the Yukon before I put something as important as money in another platform controlled by a schizophrenic marketing driven company like google.
128 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadA fun technical piece here is that this expands on the Google Pay for India app, which is built on Flutter for android and iOS[0]. As well, it's great to see Plex (bank accounts) officially announced, though it was talked about ~1 year ago here[1].
[0] https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/google-pay-picks-f...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523335
I've been using the new pay app, linked with my personal account on Simple, and have been stunned with how well it determines what businesses I'm paying.
Splitting bills is nice too :P
Plex is already a product.
https://i.imgur.com/8aczvjV.png
As long as Google controls your search results, it doesn’t have to be so.
Maybe tomorrow or a month from now Plex as we all know it (because they didn’t cancel their product 5 times the last 10 years) won’t exist in a meaningful way in your Google search results.
Getting into bank accounts is too much. It would let them know exactly how effective advertising is since they would see how money is spent and they already know what advertisements they show you.
Sorry, but no. Hard pass from me.
It is only change in "terms of service" away after enough people are using it.
The Google Rewards app is always wanting a photo of receipts when I pay with a credit card. Why would this be any different, especially when they would have access to the data so easily?
So one might only have hours to react before implicitly agreeing by failing to opt out or cancel. Perhaps even less of the change in terms is effective immediately.
https://archive.is/Aue14
"Do the right thing."
I do want an entity I trust at a given time (eg. Google, Apple, some credit union, etc.) to mine the raw data they have on my account and do something useful with it as long as neither the raw data nor the derived one is shared with other third parties.
My idea of something useful here isn't ads per se but currently I see ads for Google Fi in Gmail even though I'm a subscriber. That's pretty dumb
Google closes your bank account, you potentially lose your email, passwords, contacts, documents...
By the way, why is closing an account a practice instead of closing just the sending of emails?
Last time I heard this type of story was back in Google+ times when it was trying to enforce some silly real name policy.
Several of these stories have appeared on HN just over the past year or so as well.
Edit: The amount of downvoting on this and my original comment is puzzling to me. If someone who takes issue with it would care to explain what the problem is, I'd sincerely like to hear about it.
Yes, they are: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
1) Google Pay will never sell your information.
2) Specifically, Google Pay will never sell your transaction history to third parties
3) Or share it with the rest of Google for targeting ads.
Source: https://youtu.be/A2hL32k7Y0I?t=934
I'm not sure why you assume anything about my trust with Google?
So he's being very misleading here, likely deliberately. They don't directly share it with the rest of Google, but indirectly your Google Pay data is still laundered through shady Mastercard deals to Google's ad behemoth anyway.
Google Pay -> Data laundered through Mastercard -> Google Ads
Before trusting them with your financial data, just remember the long list of broken promises they did before!
for example: * Gmail that was supposed to be unlimited for free for ever until they reached dominance; * same with google photo unlimited storage; * Google music that suggested you upload all your musique; * Android that is more and more closed and limited years after years; * The Google cars secretly collecting wifi data * The "don't be evil" not annoyed to create a censured search engine for China * The geolocation data that was deceptively recorded and kept, and provided to the police for geofencing for the US * The company that closes and blocks accounts for futile reasons without any 'human' support if don't have social media fame.
> Google Pay will never sell your data to third parties or share your transaction history with the rest of Google for targeting ads.
Needs to be a little more categorical.
Google’s promises are worth shit.
Disc: Googler.
No matter how good this may be I don’t trust google to not close this down or make major modifications that could cause issues in 1,3,5+ years from now.
So it’s a reluctant “no thanks” from me, as I really wish they would plan their product portfolio more long term than history so far demonstrates.
I noticed someone in this thread say its built with Flutter which is cool to see! Hopefully it can compete with native sometime soon.. in the meantime this isn't there yet
Edit: Testing on iOS right now
What a spoiled opportunity. Google could have done something really innovative and useful here, but it smells like just another advertising channel to me.
No thank you.
If these features help somebody gain personal insights or build some financial literacy, I view that as a good thing.
Don't forget the internal ones that occasionally leak into external support articles... shortn/, go/, and goto.corp.google.com/... And maybe more I haven't seen...
0: https://goo.gl/search/pandora
Yes different services, but there is significant chance of confusion. "login with your plex account".
> Plex Account
I already have a Plex Account. What is my Plex Account's app name? Plex or Google Pay?
Google Plex I think is the official name, but it looks to be tied specifically to Google Pay. The code name that WSJ talks about is "cache", so Plex is the real name. But as the app shows, you would get a "Citi Plex Account".
Naming is hard.
Can't using a chip card to receive rewards apparently.
"Sorry, Enterprise accounts are not supported on Google Pay."
I've been doing NFC payments through Google Pay for years with the current Google Pay app, so this is kind of a surprise.
Also, I do not have an "Enterprise account." I have a GAFYD account from around 2006. Over time Google's turned it into some limited bullshit account, and at this point I'd pay them just to turn all that shit off and turn me into a regular Google account -- or just close the damn thing down if I could transfer all the stuff I've purchased, which Google won't allow me to do.
My fault for trusting Google, but the landscape was way different in 2006.
Couldn't sign up for Youtube TV with my main account. I could sign up for Google Play Music (formerly Google Music, now RIP) but I couldn't sign up for a family account.
Stuff like that. It gets frustrating after a while.
People do rage internally about this. Unsurprisingly, a lot of current Google employees were early adopters of new Google features.
Some product teams within Google don't like all the extra overhead, paperwork, and complexity that adds, so instead they just block all enterprise accounts.
They refused to allow me to pay them more, and refused to allow me to transfer my purchases to another account I verifiably own so I could then pay them more.
I know legacy GAFYD accounts don't matter to Google, and I don't expect them to, but it'd be nice to be able to transfer my stuff out. I know we like to point out who Google's real customers are, but after a decade-and-a-half I've actually paid them real money for things, and shockingly would like to continue doing so.
Can't use business calendars on my google home (so switched to Alexa which DOES support them oddly despite whatever mumbo jumbo google says).
Can't share home setup to my wife.
A variety of family sharing issues.
I mean, your evangalists (in addition to an actual business domain with big bucks I pay for gsuite for myself for little bucks) are locked out.
It really brings home how google never actually finishes / gets the final 10-20% done and working, stuff just goes to zombieland.
I seriously doubt this, but I find it interesting that they address the elephant in the room in the launch announcement.
I wonder how many other Google launches will note this as a perk before the hammer comes down from up high?
If it it written in the privacy policy or similar I would trust it. Of course that doesn't mean it will never change in the future.
It's messy and often misleading for an average consumer.
There's no chance I'd use a service like this from Google by the way. I would probably had been interested if it had come from Google 15 years ago, but they have too much badwill since then, with all their cancelled services and stories of banned accounts.
Their services are designed to suck everything knowable about you like an information vampire.
The dialogs associated with informal or semi-formal transactions may not belong in your personal chat space; quite often that set of dialogs exists only before and during the transactions and never after that.
> ..but they have too much badwill since then..
Google pay is the market leader in India in fintech. It is perhaps most trusted brand. The notion of "Google is evil", "Kills of products so would not use its services" only exist in HN bubble, if we leave this space and go to emerging markets Google absolutely rules.
I can understand why! Google services are free, or free-ish, and work extremely well!
Do you think sudden account bans with no recourse are something to be concerned about, or is it a lightning-strike-rare kind of situation: happens, but does not bear worrying about?
I remember a while ago there was an outbreak of news reports of people being wrongly declared dead in India, which gave them all manner of bureaucratic trouble. I don't know if Aardhar has made that better or worse.
The court of public opinion is not a real deterrent especially for a company with such power to shape it, to the point where the only way to even be aware of what they're doing is to be very tech-educated and interested in the particular topic.
BTW chat is really useful feature in P2P payments.
No thanks, no thanks.
I love my apple card, but kinda gets annoying on days when i have to switch to an android
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-brainard-idUSKBN1...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/357...
The legislation you linked has not passed the House or Senate (it doesnt appear to even have been voted on).