Google Checkout makes online shopping easier

Online shoppers, rejoyce! Google Checkout promises to make your e-commerce checkout experiences a lot more intuitive, faster, secure and convenient.

For those who wish to see how this new checkout service works, there’s a cool little video that shows how the process happens. There’s also a list of merchants currently using Google’s Checkout service.

Here’s an overview of Google Checkout, in four easy steps.

Search for participating stores, across the web.

Finding stores is quite easy. Just surf in Google’s sponsored links and identify the ads with a little shopping cart to surf to sites that have implemented the Google Checkout service.

Checkout in a matter of mere seconds.

You don’t have to signup ahead of time, just do your e-shopping and click the Google Checkout button to complete a purchase. If you’re already a Gmail (or any other one of Google’s services) user, just sign in and if not, signing up is a breeze. After that, review your order and you’re done!

Keep your credit card number and email address confidential.

Avoid pesky merchants and fraudulent intermediaries with Google Checkout. Shop with confidence knowing that your credit card number isn’t shared with sellers. Your email address can also be kept confidential, if that’s what you wish.

Track all your orders and shipping in one place.

You don’t have to remember usernames and password combinations for every store you visit. Easily browse your purchase history, track orders and deliveries and quickly contact sellers… all from one web page.

For those who want to know, this isn’t even close to the much anticipated Gbuy service which is intended to compete head-on with PayPal. This being said, PayPal may choose to adjust its own service a bit in view of this new competitor, even if it’s a rather indirect one.

Experts believe this checkout process is part of a larger e-commerce strategy at Google which includes Google Base and the upcoming -and still unofficial- Gbuy. For the time being, it’s an outstanding boost to the Google AdWords program because with this new checkout process, the service is once again differentiated from the competition’s offerings.

Overall, it’s another service that will help merchants sell online and for anyone who loves the web, this is awesome news.