Google Checkout desperate? Touts $25 new merchant bounty

UPDATE: Google Checkout tries another financial incentive to gain traction, this time under the guise of a gift to merchants: "Free processing for the holidays."

Google Checkout is a high-profile, dual-pronged attempt by Google to both solidify and bolster its text ad business, responsible for 99% of its revenues and 100% of its $113 billion market cap, and to reduce its reliance on same advertising juggernaut for future growth.

The company’s much ballyhooed Goggle Checkout, however, is proving to be not only another failed Google attempt at diversification, but, more significantly, a strategic miscalculation that risks alienating Google advertisers, turning off Google users and souring its relationship with perhaps its biggest customer: eBay.

In “Google Checkout vs. eBay Pay Pal: Where is the competition?” I recount how Google Checkout has been beset by both customer and merchant defections due to unsatisfactory service and infrastructure shortcomings.

In “Merchants on Google Checkout: undermines our customer relationships” I discuss how Google Checkout is against the best interests of merchants and recount merchant distrust of Google Checkout.

Google Checkout's lackluster track record is leading Google to agressively hawk the payment service via an affiliate program style merchant referrer bounty pogram providing "incentives" to those bringing Google a Checkout merchant:

Google Checkout Merchant Referral Program
Earn cash for bringing Checkout to your merchants

If you're a developer, e-commerce provider, web designer, or any other business or individual that maintains relationships with online merchants, you can earn cash for helping your merchants get up and running with Google Checkout.

Get paid for every merchant you sign up.

• For one year, you will earn 0.5% of all Google Checkout sales processed by the merchants you refer.
• You will earn an additional $25 for each merchant you refer in one year that processes at least $500 in sales and 3 transactions with Checkout.

Google's preferred modus operandi for new product rollouts is generally exclusive "limited by invitation only betas" which serve to further elevate the perceived desirabilty and cachet of Google services.

Google has so miscalculated with Checkout, however, that it can't even seem to buy its way into the business.

ALSO SEE: "Google to eBay, Apple, Dell, Amazon: Ecommerce is a 'disaster'"