The New York Times is reporting that Stephanie Tilenius
is joining Google as vice president of commerce.
This is a new position for Google. Company officials were mum on what responsibilities Tilenius would have, but sources cited by the Times as being “close” to Google said she would “oversee Google Checkout, the company’s online payments system, and other e-commerce efforts.”
Industry observer Tom Krazit
wrote that Tilenius, “who worked on eBay’s PayPal product while at the company, would seem a natural fit for the position… Google Checkout gave eBay and PayPal executives fits when it was first announced back in 2006. But the service hasn’t done much to halt PayPal’s status as the de facto standard for online transactions by small businesses and Web sites.”
Her hiring has led to speculation that Google’s gearing up for a serious push into online commerce. Tilenius announced in late September she would leave eBay by the end of the year, after running eBay North America and working as global product management for eBay Marketplaces.
EWeek’s Clint Boulton wrote, “I think
we know what Google wants to do in e-commerce. As the leading search engine, Google wants to maintain and grow share versus Microsoft Bing, which has been gaining share, and Facebook, which pretty much own the social sector of the Web.”
Google “wants to be wherever there is a lucrative opportunity online and e-commerce represents one such huge opportunity,” Boulton said.
“If Google makes inroads into e-commerce, it could cause headaches for a number of online retailers, as many of them get a majority of their traffic from Google, both through Web search and search ads,” the Times noted, adding that eBay, in particular, “relies on Google for much of its traffic and is one of the biggest advertisers on Google.”
Maybe she can just get Checkout working smoothly. As Krazit says, “Recent problems with Google Checkout have had merchants up in arms, exposing holes in Google’s customer service operation.” And since Google Checkout is a key part of Google’s mobile strategy, as he says, “serving as the payment processing platform for the Android Market and the only way to buy a Nexus One,” it would behoove Google to get it right.
Because as Boulton says, as much as Google might daydream about selling a lot of stuff online, they “would need to strike up a lot of distribution relationships to make that happen and we have no evidence that is in the works. And it would have to build a solid customer service support network, which would be a huge undertaking.”
Especially given the customer service debacle Nexus One turned out to be for Google. Get that right first.
