A while back Google came out with their own shopping cart system, competing with PayPal. This was nice because it gave customers more options, and was helpful for the small business owner who is just getting started and does not want to get their own merchant account.
It’s low cost to get started (2% of your sales + $0.20 per transaction) , and they have a program that if you spend money with them in your Adwords account, you get a credit/rebate.
This is all fine and dandy, EXCEPT when it comes to the buying process.
You see on the “Thank You” page, the customer sees this message that WARNS them about YOU the merchant!
It’s a check box to the customer that says ” Keep my email addres confidential. Google will forward all email from [Company Name] to you” See image below
So basically Google does not trust YOU the merchant to be ethical, and it wants to ‘protect’ the customer by keeping the email address. I do not like this distrust of online business owners, and this fact will keep me from using Google Checkout in my business.
If you should decide to use Google Checkout, then just be aware of this fact.