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PayPal prepares for competition from Google

PayPal is already a giant in the online payments world.

Over 24% of the US online payments marketshare, according to financial institution consulting firm Celent LLC. Roughly 69% of PayPal’s 4Q revenue came from eBay-related transactions. That says a lot about the huge power and influence eBay has in the global e-commerce.

Founded in 1998, PayPal boasts 96 million accounts with consumers who want to send payments online without revealing their credit-card or banking information to vendors. The successful PayPal formula includes the possibility for all these account holders to receive money just about as easily as it is to send some.

What happens when Google enters the online payment market?

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt already confirmed in press accounts that the company was building a payment service but he quickly denied it would directly compete with PayPal. Furthermore, Mr Schmidt said Google didn’t intend to offer a “person-to-person, stored-value payments system” which most people consider to be exactly what PayPal offers.

Mr Jeff Jordan, who is president of eBay’s PayPal online-payments unit, has allegedly spent time analyzing this statement from Google and he doesn’t believe Mr Schmidt is telling the whole story.

It’s all rumors for the time being but gbuy sounds like the term Google has coined for this new service. Also, the alleged goal is to enable anyone to accept credit cards or gain access to gcredit for their e-business. It basically announces for a complete, fast and easy e-commerce solution.

From a bird’s eye view, PayPal’s credible competition is still scarce and perhaps a little competition will do good. Perhaps PayPal will grant more creative control to their merchants, simplify the payment process or even participate more actively in the e-merchants marketing initiatives.

It doesn’t sound like it’s about lowering the cost to either the consumer or the merchant but perhaps bringing the legendary Google simplicity and straightforwardness to the online payments world. The Google brand itself might also be a huge plus.

Wether Google launches the new service quickly or not, PayPal must now content with a major competitor who’s demonstrated time and again that it’s able to bring a service to market faster than the other guys in Silicon Valley.

PayPal has a solid offering but it’s hard to imagine Google coming out with a service intended to be # 2.

This is just the beginning of an epic battle for online transaction processing.

Available domain names for the field of insurance

If you’re looking to bank on the red-hot world insurance market boom, perhaps you’ll appreciate this valuable list of available domain names pertaining to the field of insurance.

All these names can be registered right now!

Take a moment to imagine what you could develop with these beauties:

…and with another spin on the “insurance” theme:

You may want to toy around with some of these suggestions, perhaps with alternative terms or domain suffixes (.net, .info and so on).

All these names were available for registration at the moment this post was published.

Happy insurance-related domain name registration!

Finding treasures in pre-owned domain names

Most domain name owners like to maintain a healthy domain portfolio composed of a mix of new, promising or contextually significant names that are accompanied by a host of previously owned ones that have become available for registration, once again.

Other domain name owners can lose interest, forget to renew, go out of business or decease. It’s all part of life.

Should you profit from this? If you’re confident you’re legally clear, why not? After all, pre-owned domains can have quite a few advantages, such as:

  • Existing search engine listings / placements;
  • Incoming web links from all sorts of previous “partner” sites;
  • Previously marketed branding (sometimes significant);
  • Older “wordings” for domains can sometimes be more straighforward since “they were there first” so the value can be quite high, in and of itself;
  • Countless bookmarks from previous visitors.

Previous owners can get their name back, in some rare cases but since you’re enlightened enough to validate the “quality” of a name beforehand, you shouldn’t be bothered with this type of situation.

Why should you want pre-owned domain names?

Because if they’re worth something, somebody will inevitably profit from them. Perhaps you’d be better off being that lucky domain snapper!

The following situations are typical of people looking for pre-owned treasures:

  • Need more “natural” traffic for your web site;
  • Only have names for the company but also need some for “specialy offerings”;
  • Want to shorten or lenghten their name, such as “ca.com” to complement “computerassociates.com”;
  • Wish to bolster the “type-in” traffic for highly lucrative PPC terms.

In fact, the reasons can be numerous but in all cases, the new owner can do whatever he or she wants with it. That’s the way the domain name “ecosystem” works!

There should be a big publicity campaign to remind people that all domain names in the world are 100% recyclable. Sooner or later, almost every currently registered domain name is a candidate to become available again. That’s when you spring into action!

Here are some tools to get your imagination going:

And to check who owns the domains you’re looking to snap, simply use this super-fast international whois tool. To purchase your domains, follow this link as start saving money for all of the web’s favorite suffixes (not just .com).

Happy pre-owned domain name hunting!

Register your .eu domain right away

The heavily marketed .eu domain name suffix is already a hit!

EURid, the non-profit organisation appointed by the European Commission to manage requests, reported fierce demand for the “.eu” domain names… probably from people like who are buying up the best names.

In the first 15 minutes, EURid received 27,949 applications for .eu domains and after one hour the number had risen to a whopping 71,235. A surprising 2,559 applications have been rejected, up to now. The specific reasons for those rejections weren’t available, though.

Hundreds of thousands of businesses predictably raced to snap up “.eu” internet domain names, with “sex.eu” taking the prize for the most sought-after address on the first day companies could apply.

Let’s keep in mind that two months after the .eu domain name was launched for public institutions and trademark holders, the tag was opened up to companies other than those seeking a site for a brand, as well as for art works and literature.

The “.eu” domain name is not supposed to replace national endings such as “.fr” and “.de” but rather offer the possibility of a pan-European identity in cyberspace.

You can buy your favorite .eu domain names now!

Some very good names are still available for registration but act now, before someone else has “your” strike of genius for a .eu name!

Relief for pressured TV ads?

Have you heard about adaptive ads?

Perhaps you’re more familiar with shape-shifting ads? No, it’s all new to you?

That’s fine, Visible World, based in New York City, is just starting to gain ground with a smart technology that brings a powerful toolset for advertisers that consumers will most probably appreciate, a lot.

Start with the numbers.

The average US household watches around 30 hours of TV per week while being bombarded by over 700 ads! TV advertising must evolve or risk losing ground. Why? Because local advertisers need to reach their intended audience with the right message to stay relevant… and somewhat interesting.

Using Visible World’s adaptive ad technology, the advertiser can continuously refine his message. This means an airline who just filled all planes to destination “A” can immediately start announcing destination “B”, therefore aligning advertising a lot more closely to its changing business. That’s a revolution, for TV!

While traditional ads tend to be both irrelevant and repetitive for consumers, they’re supposed to be entertaining and informative. This means mass marketing is about to become local… very local. Even more so, Visible World is already talking about personal interests and communities. Consumers are treated as important individually instead of an anonymous heard of “dumb walking wallets”.

A TV station using this kind of technology sends a powerful message to local viewers and small businesses alike. It’s a clear message. The internet’s PPC model isn’t the only one, anymore, that can reach targeted local consumers.

Wired has published an interesting article called “The Ad Scientist“. It’s about Visible World and the people who worked quite hard to make this technology a viable alternative to the rather boring “traditional” counterpart.

Why is this all so important?

Because most of us watch TV and little to no advertising spots actually change our shopping habbits. What would happen if a new technology were to ensure that over 80% of the ads we are shown precisely and intelligently target our local lifestyle?

That’s right, it’s most probably going to look like the PPC-craze all over again… but on TV!

Perhaps Visible World is on to something…

Tools of the e-marketing trade

Even if you’re an e-marketing genius, you already know the value of keeping a list of highly targetted web tools and services.

Here’s a fresh list of resources any domain name and web site marketing expert loves to use… and yes, all the links are free:

ONLINE TOOLS

WEB RESOURCES

You can’t use “Russia” in your name anymore

It’s the most pathetic excuse for protectionism I’ve read about in years.

The US-based domain owner of RussiaToday.com has been asked by Sergei Frolov, General Director for the RIA-Novosti news agency, to provide proof it has proof from the former Soviet Union to use the name “Russia”.

You read that right!

I’m not making any of this up and yes, we’re in 2006. You can read the full news release here, at MosNews.
So David Rothstein, head of the European Internet Network who owns and currently operates RussiaToday.com released a statement saying thousands of companies worldwide “will be quite surprised to know that they need an official stamp of approval from Moscow to use the name ‘Russia’.”

It’s funny because if every government in the world were to play this nasty censorship game, the Duma would be the first in line to pass a law saying its citizens won’t be prosecuted for using, let’s say, DenmarkNewsToday.com for any purposes they want.

Let’s all hope this is not a picture of things to come…

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