Google has recently released its latest application Google Checkout. This is supposed to be Google's counterpart to Pay Pal. Google Checkout has two parts. A merchant side for those selling products or services on the internet and a user side for those wanting to buy those products and services.

Right now there are a couple of major draw backs to the Google Checkout service. First, is that peer to peer money transfer is not available. If you have a checkout account and I have a checkout account, unless one of us is selling something with a merchant account we can not transfer funds. Definitely a disadvantage to anyone that uses paypal where direct money transfers are allowed and available.

The second major drawback is that Ebay has already announced that Google Checkout will not be offered as a way to pay. This is a major set back. It will be difficult to get users to sign up or switch if they can not use it with Ebay. It makes sense that Ebay would make such an announcement since they own paypal.

Google Checkout sounds like a great idea. I signed up right away as I do with most google services, but it's lacking usability. Currently there is not many places that it can be used although the transaction process is very streamlined if both parties are using it (merchant and customer).