Google's Update Mania

Google is a company that owns a huge number of products and it seems the search giant decided to update them often enough to attract the attention of a main part of the Internet users. Yesterday, I remarked that Google released the second update for Google Base in a week, a decision that describes exactly what the company wants from its products.

Today, Google announced that Google Checkout is updated again, by adding a new feature that will allow merchants to use existing affiliate tracking and analytics tools for sales through the service.

Google Checkout is a service that was meant to enable customers from all around the world to buy all kind of things from multiple online shops with ease.

"Starting today, merchants will be able to use existing affiliate tracking and analytics tools for sales through Google Checkout. You can now include a pixel URL with parameters in the cart post and it will be included on the Checkout Thank You page. You'll also be able to include placeholders for dynamic variables that will be populated before calling the URL. For more details, refer to third-party conversion tracking in the Google Checkout API documentation," Kyle Harrison, Product Manager, said.

Google's service is representing a real threat for the online shopping sites from all around the world, the rivalry between Google Checkout and eBay being well known. Some time ago, eBay decided to restrict their customers' access to the service provided by Google, especially to ensure their company the leading position.

At that time, eBay banned Google, forcing their customers to search for another alternative for doing online transactions. Because Google Checkout represented a huge threat for PayPal users, Google decided to improve its own service and implement powerful features to make Checkout act as a single service.