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Google plans to partner with banks to offer checking accounts

185 points by Bostonian 7y ago

ckastner 7y ago
Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. It's one thing to offer an online product suite without any support, it's a completely other thing to offer a product that is as heavily regulated as banking services. They're probably not going to earn any significant amount from providing a checking account. I can only assume that they're after the transaction data itself (looking for patterns, etc.), but I find it hard to believe that the payoff would be large enough to endure the pain that is the current regulatory environment surrounding banking. Especially when you're notorious for avoiding personal interactions.
- dannyr 7y ago
  I have Google Fi and bought from Google Store. Their customer service has been fantastic. Maybe my experience is one of the few exceptions but I know a bunch of people who also had a great experience with customer support by Google.
  - romanovcode 7y ago
    I just checked what it is. Isn't it a bit expensive? $70/m for a mobile plan seems ridicilous.
    - mankyd 7y ago
      That's for unlimited data. They offer a prorated, $10/gb plan as well.
    - watwatinthewat 7y ago
      Everyone I know with it does the $20/mo + $10/gb plan. If you don't use more than a gig or two a month, that's close to one of the cheapest plans around. There are some cheaper prepaid plans, though.
      - moooo99 7y ago
        Wow, and I thoughtmobile data in Germany was expensive. I pay 8€/m for 4GB. Although the LTE coverage is pretty bad with my provider.
        JCharante 7y ago
        Yeah Data in the US is a bit ridiculous. You can get a GB of data in Vietnam for $0.50. I usually get the 16GB plan but buy it every twenty days.
        moooo99 7y ago
        Yeah I see why prices differ from country to country, but 10$/GB seems ridiculus.
        drstewart 7y ago
        8€/m for 4GB is ridiculous compared to Vietnam's price, yet you don't seem perturbed by that.
        jddj 7y ago
        That seems reasonable enough. The German and US economies are slightly more comparable, no?
        Someone1234 7y ago
        Urban parts of the US are subsidizing large rural areas. Almost all plans are 50 state plans, which means you're paying to install and maintain cellphone coverage for mostly corn fields or forests in the middle of nowhere. Check out this map: https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg For costs to come down, you'd need people to adopt single-state or two/three state plans on the East/West coast. But starting such a network would be prohibitively expensive. For example an "only California" plan could likely be very inexpensive and comparable to Europe.
    - relaunched 7y ago
      said no one that lives in the US, ever! It always blows my mind how that whenever you go anywhere in the world, you can get amazing mobile plans (data and call / sms) for $10-$30 dollars per month.
      - jayshua 7y ago
        Probably has something to do with the size. I'd imagine covering a country like Denmark or Ireland is considerably easier and cheaper for a smaller company then covering the US would be.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        The EU and EAA - with a roughly similar land area and population to the US - has free roaming by law. Your French plan is good in Norway. The US could institute a similar regime that'd permit state/local carriers to exist and compete.
        postsantum 7y ago
        You would be surprised to see prices for mobile Internet in Russia
        davchana 7y ago
        & in India.
        tylerhou 7y ago
        How is the rural coverage? Is it better than the rural coverage in the US?
        davchana 7y ago
        Yes, atleast 3G is everywhere, 4G is I think most of the places.
        aliceryhl 7y ago
    - jelling 7y ago
      It's worth it if you travel internationally as you can just show up in (nearly) any country and not get gouged on data. Also, that price isn't bad for the U.S.
      - sulekhaholidays 7y ago
        yes you are right..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxgfWr9FvyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxgfWr9FvyM
    - delfinom 7y ago
      Welcome to America, bend over. $70/month is standard totally not collusion pricing for single line plans.
      - LandR 7y ago
        Wow, I get unlimited broadband internet for my home, mobile service (unlimited texts, 1000mins, 2GB data) and my landline for less than that!
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - metasaval 7y ago
      I also use Google Fi, albeit the $10/gb plan, so my monthly bill is usually around $50-$60. The real reason I stick with it, even though I could get slightly cheaper plans elsewhere, is for international travel. I don't even travel internationally often at all, and I don't consider myself a foodie or world traveller or anything like that. But work is sending me to Taiwan in a couple weeks and it's nice knowing that I'll be able to land and have the same data and text rates as back home. Same for when I went on a cruise to Mexico with my family earlier this year. We landed, Google Fi sent me a text saying "give us a sec." And then a few minutes later I was online, without me having to do anything. Most cellular companies make you pay out the ass in international roaming costs, or if you have an unlocked phone you can get a local sim. The closest company to match this policy is T-Mobile, but their international data is capped at 256kbps unless you pay more.
  - ckastner 7y ago
    Are those other experiences also with Google Fi, or was it some other product?
    - ehsankia 7y ago
      I got great experience with Google One support. Obviously if you're only using free services and not paying anything, you're not going to get great support.
  - postsantum 7y ago
    My experience with google support ranges from non-existent to unhelpful garbage
    - ehsankia 7y ago
      What products do you pay for? Obviously you're not going to get support for a free service. Google One is a 2$/month subscription that gives you 100GB storage in Drive and Google Support. The support has been instant and quality so far.
      - postsantum 7y ago
        Android developer account. I'd expect more than canned bot responses for 30% revenue share
  - jjulius 7y ago
    Yours is absolutely an exception. I also have Google Fi, but I had to create a second Google account in order to get it. I had Google Wallet years back. At one point while I was traveling, I lost my debit card and thankfully had my Google Wallet card as a backup. I was able to transfer money to the card from my checking account, though I only moved over what I needed for short periods of time. This resulted in multiple movements of money to my Google account, which in turn resulted in Google flagging this as suspicious and preventing that account from using Google to pay for anything (I couldn't even purchase via the Play Store even if I selected my non-Google debit/credit cards as payment methods). They asked for verification of who I am, and I supplied the correct documents to them multiple times. Each time I was told that those documents did not suffice with no explanation as to why they were not reauthorizing my account nor why the documents I sent them weren't up to their standards. Just "Nope, go away." For some dumb reason I insisted on proceeding with signing up for Fi, and found it super easy to just create a new Google account specifically for that. I've been increasingly uneasy about the longevity of this account because of that experience and realize now that it was probably foolish to migrate my phone service to a company that had already fucked me, but c'est la vie.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    The measurement of customer service experience is not when someone can follow "if (X) then (Y)" with a customer on a phone. Rather it is when the CS person needs to resolve something that does not have "if (X) then (Y)" step in the manual.
- profmonocle 7y ago
  My first thought when I read this was all the horror stories of people's Google accounts being closed for no obvious reason, and with no recourse (other than going viral on social media and hoping a Googler notices.) Imagine that happening with your bank. I'm sure existing banking laws will restrict them from algorithmically banning people like this, but their reputation is bad enough to keep me away. It's the same reason I'll never use Google Domains or Google Fi - my domains and phone number are too important to lose access to.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > Imagine that happening with your bank. This already happens, a lot. Do something that generates a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report (generally, stuff that looks like money laundering) and your bank will cut you loose, and they aren't legally allowed to disclose why. Running a marijuana dispensary? Forget about a bank account.
    - teddyh 7y ago
      See also what credit card companies did to Wikileaks; i.e. they simply refused all their cardholders to donate money to Wikileaks.
      - globuous 7y ago
        Did not know that... now i understand bitcoin.
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        Because of the numerous chargebacks associated with plenty of people using other people's credit cards to make those donations. They weren't taking a political stance. If Wikileaks supporters had used their own credit cards Wikileaks could still take donations by credit card.
    - sharpneli 7y ago
      Sure. But with Google you will lose your bank account by making a comment on youtube livestream. It was here on HN few days ago. Streamer asked people to spam the chat just like in twitch, youtubes automated systems banned viewers who obliged locking them out of all google products, gmail etc. Now imagine losing also your banking due to things like that.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  > Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. To reduce the threat of Apple from siphoning folks away from Android and thus disintermediating their advertising business. That's the reason they went into Android and Chrome and half-baked subscription services: to defend the advertising business. Nearly everything Google does out loud that's not GCP is ultimately motivated by the need to defend, sustain or grow the advertising business. The rest of what they do gets a lot of media attention but comes close to being a rounding error by comparison to ... the advertising business.
- belorn 7y ago
  It might seem perplexing when imagining a American bank, but from the perspective of Swedish banks, it make perfect sense. Any direct contact with customer is a cost center. Dealing with people, dealing with physical cash, checks, just having a office in city areas. It is all just very expensive. It is much cheaper to just have an online service with online products that get processed without human involvement. The result in Sweden is almost 40% less offices in the last 10 years and only a handful in existence that handle physical cash. Customers are a bit less satisfied but you can't really live in Sweden without having a bank account so what are people really to do but accept the change. Banks profits are up so the trend is likely to continue.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Banks in the US run back and forth on this, and probably always will. Less locations saves money. However locations mean places where your customers come in and you can sell them "add-on". A lot easier to talk to someone about their car insurance when they are already coming in every week anyway.
- Braggadocious 7y ago
  1. User/Business Data 2. They have the computing and engineering power to optimize pretty much anything beyond where it is today. 3. User/Business Data
  - zer0tonin 7y ago
    Weren't they already buying the data from mastercard and visa?
    - Braggadocious 7y ago
      More data is more data.
- jsonne 7y ago
  Mastercard sells your data to advertisers for targeting with programmatic display, video etc. I suspect Google is just trying to do the same thing.
- Accujack 7y ago
  > I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. Money, as always. >They're probably not going to earn any significant amount from providing a checking account. That depends on specifics of the accounts and how they work. It's possible to make a lot of money off of just temporarily holding someone else's cash. Transfer firms like Moneygram make most of their cash off of interest on other people's money when it's being "sent" from one location to another. >I can only assume that they're after the transaction data itself (looking for patterns, etc.) This is the correct answer. The more data they can aggregate and cross-correlate, the more accurate their derived conclusions about the spending habits, psychology, and behavior of people can be. The more accurate those are, the more control, power, and money Google will have. I'm sure they don't "intend" that it will be used for anything unethical, but presently there are no laws forbidding them from doing anything at all with it as long as it's derived data. The overall effect of them doing this research is similar to a twilight zone plot... imagine a psychologist discovers a principle within the human mind that exists within everyone. When used, this discovery very strongly influences the target to buy whatever is on offer, to the level almost of a compulsion. Use of this knowledge is undetectable, but allows anyone who knows it to sell anything to anyone for any price they choose (within reason). That's what Google is trying to build.
  - krustyburger 7y ago
    As much as I enjoy Twilight Zone comparisons, it is pretty hyperbolic to claim that Google is working toward the equivalent of mind control rays because they are obsessed with consumer data. People’s lack of openness to advertising attempts is going to continue to be a barrier to ads being perfectly effective, whether or not Google has banking data on top of Gmail data and regardless of how specifically targeted the ads are. People will still have free will (to the extent they ever have) no matter how individually tailored ads get.
    - ok_coo 7y ago
      I used to think to the same thing, that is until I saw the selfish ledger video. Yes, of course we have free will but I have a difficult time trusting a company that would put out something like this. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...
- Spooky23 7y ago
  They are front-ending the bank. It can drive value on the banking side and make customers stick to the Google service side. Think of things like communications with banks. If you could send me statements or notifications securely to Google Drive or GMail, that saves the bank money and drives value on the Google side. Banks and credit unions do this already. Your average credit union with a few hundred million in deposits is paying a provider to run all of the web and IVR services.
- doctorpangloss 7y ago
  Because Apple credit card.
- jiveturkey 7y ago
  reaction to Apple VISA? maybe android pay will be more valuable with direct checking tie-in.
- awalton 7y ago
  > I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. ... really? Google is the Consumer Intelligence Agency. All they want is all of your data on how you're spending your money, so they can sell more ads. There's no other lofty goals here but more access to how you and your money moves.
cm2187 7y ago
For those who think that google locking arbitrarily your google account isn't fun enough... And also for those who reject adblockers and are happy to see google roaming through all their financial transactions (and health information [1]) [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightingale-gathers-personal-health-data-on-millions-of-americans-11573496790?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=4 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightin...
- kyrra 7y ago
  For the health care data, Google goes through that data as it goes through any data that is hosted on GCP. Yes we are storing data for them and providing services ontop of it, but that is what cloud does. See: https://www.google.com/amp/s/cloudblog.withgoogle.com/topics/inside-google-cloud/our-partnership-with-ascension/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/cloudblog.withgoogle.com/topics... https://cloud.google.com/solutions/healthcare/ https://cloud.google.com/solutions/healthcare/ (I'm a Googler, opinions are my own)
- mhb 7y ago
  You mean like pretty much everyone who doesn't care that their Venmo transactions are public by default? Or so I've heard.
  - beamatronic 7y ago
    What’s even worse is that to link Venmo to your bank account, you must share your bank credentials with Venmo!
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      You mean like when you hand a check to someone?
      - beamatronic 7y ago
        Bank login credentials
CPLX 7y ago
Every time I read another headline like this (and the healthcare one from yesterday) think of that scene from the Matrix. I realize it's not exactly a perfect metaphor, but nonetheless I have visions of an Agent Smith character saying something like this: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify Google and Amazon and Facebook and I realized that you're not actually businesses. Every business on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. A disease, a cancer of this planet.
- trevyn 7y ago
  Also humans!
  - khawkins 7y ago
    Below replacement birth rates in 1st world societies seem to disprove the idea that humans inevitably expand to the point of environmental collapse. Further, having as many children as the environment can support, regardless of the consequences for the environment or its destruction, is natural for nearly every life form. Look at invasive species like Asian carp or zebra mussels.
    - SEJeff 7y ago
      Or other invasive species like Middle Management
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > Below replacement birth rates in 1st world societies seem to disprove the idea that humans inevitably expand to the point of environmental collapse. Or they're a warning sign of it. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm-counts-continue-to-fall/572794/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm-cou... > As new data emerge, however, many scientists now believe sperm counts have indeed fallen—and continue to fall. As a story in GQ noted earlier this year, a widely cited study published in 2017 by researchers from the Hebrew University and Mount Sinai’s medical school found that among nearly 43,000 men from North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, sperm counts per milliliter of semen had declined more than 50 percent from 1973 to 2011. And not only that, “but total sperm counts were down by almost 60 percent: We are producing less semen, and that semen has fewer sperm cells in it,” wrote the GQ contributor Daniel Noah Halpern. When Halpern asked several scientists why, they presented a united front: It was the unprecedented amount of chemicals now routinely entering the human body.
fmpwizard 7y ago
Besides the privacy risks with full on moving your banking to Google, I think another big issue is when they decide this product isn't profitable any more, and/or some other department in Google comes up with banking 2.0 and you end up having to move all your bill payments, auto draft, etc back out. If we thought killing Google Reader was bad, killing your bank app would be even worse.
- stvswn 7y ago
  JFC you guys and the Google Reader thing -- it's been six years, get a new canned response to every Google story.
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    I really liked Inbox...
  - scarmig 7y ago
    One hundred years from now, while Google surveils us 24/7, psychologically brainwashes us from birth, and sends the occasional Google drone to terminate users who violate ToS, you'll still have people on Hacker News bitching about Reader.
  - carty76ers 7y ago
    It wasn’t just Reader... have you paid attention to the other stories?
    - SupersonicScrub 7y ago
      Here's the full list. The sheer size of it blows my mind whenever I look at it. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
  - fmpwizard 7y ago
    I didn't want to include the much longer list, if we look to more recent events, Google Play Music is in the process of being replaced by Youtube Music, but with way fewer features. I was also a Google Wallet user, and they killed it, Google Notebook, I'm sure I can keep going if I try to remember for a few more minutes.
Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
Because you should absolutely lose access to your money when Google's algorithms decide your YouTube comments are spam.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  The Cast System of 2020: + Those with Amazon Prime and Google + Those with only Google + Those banned from Google
  - _jal 7y ago
    - Heathen refuseniks who refuse to do business with any of them.
    - ivalm 7y ago
      those are just culled.
    - DannyB2 7y ago
      Those people don't exist.
  - holeyness 7y ago
    *caste
    - postsantum 7y ago
      I think it was a part of joke referring to Google Cast
      - vorpalhex 7y ago
        ...yes, yes that was it.. definitely..
  - cardiffspaceman 7y ago
    Sorry but I can't tell who is the top caste in your system?
sdan 7y ago
What's next, Apple announcing Apple Cloud Services? This year has been crazy with how much big tech is trying to create walled gardens for consumers.
- delfinom 7y ago
  It's the only way to continue the infinite growth model. Maximize rent seeking.
  - buboard 7y ago
    swimming in more cash than you can even think what to do with helps.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      Perhaps that's why they're getting into real estate.
mc32 7y ago
Hopefully they wont lock your accounts if you violate their TOS elsewhere in their ecosystem...
auiya 7y ago
What is the expected value-added Google intends to provide the banks?
- donalhunt 7y ago
  lower cost of doing business; better user experience¹. ¹ ymmv.
petschge 7y ago
This increasing spread of FAANG companies across all domains in an attempt to keep customers completely contained in their ecosystem reminds me of the megacorps in the Shadowrun universe. We are not too far away from the point where national law does not apply to them any more. It is certainly already hard to make tax laws stick. And all the googlers that are proud to slave away for that particular overlord remind me of the sarari men.
- AJ007 7y ago
  Rather than some sort of intentional cyberpunk dystopia I think in part what we are seeing is some pressure by American tech companies to emulate Chinese tech companies such as Tencent. One app to rule them all, perhaps would make a good catch phrase. Some of it is a mix of offense and defense, just trying to copy each other and expecting zero margin while preventing a loss in market share. The national law avoidance, tax avoidance, are both being dealt with by EU. Google is being incredibly cagey about how much of a material impact this is going to have on their business. I don't believe they are complying with GDPR, among other things. Google / Alphabet has basically handcuffed themselves and thrown out the keys in the EU vivisection room. If you examine Google / Alphabet's position in the US, they went from being the most frequent visitor of the Obama White House (something like weekly visits) to be vilified by the far right, the far left, and the center. The customers that still trust Google have been left largely in the dark and don't read the news. I've been negative on Google for about a decade now, arriving to the party far in advance of everyone else. I saw the tricks they were pulling back then when they were celebrated. Yesterday's story about Google working with Ascension was extraordinarily shocking. There are, of course, serious privacy issues, and that dominated the headlines. What is truly appalling is that Google is using their artificial intelligence / machine learning work to help a major healthcare company "extract more revenue from patients" (WSJ.) Google has veered so far off course, one wonders if Larry Page and Sergey Brin may be suffering from head injuries or dementia, or just drowned themselves in their own hubris. It starts to sound a lot like OpenAI, where there tech firms believe they are going to do something so substantial, are execute above and beyond what anyone else is capable of, that the entire world is there's for the taking. It is more likely that these companies will cease to exist, by a wide margin. With or without regulators. The more pots they stick their hands in, the less consumers will trust them. We already see it here on hn, people no longer bother to try new Google products because we don't believe those products will still be around in a few years. What happens when the early adapters reject your products?
williesleg 7y ago
Citibank is offering the card, Google is slurping the data. No big deal.
zimbatm 7y ago
Recently, Google suspended accounts for using Emoji comments on YouTube. This is the whole account, including Gmail access[1]. Now imaging your checking account also got disabled because some bot decided that you looked suspicious. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Man I can't wait until they cancel this product too, and I have to migrate my money back to my current bank. I'll save myself the leg-work ;)
- eloff 7y ago
  And there is almost no way to talk to a human and get access back. I like Google's services, but I think their ability to deny service with no recourse is shameful. If I lost my gmail account with my last fifteen years of emails, linked to ask my other online accounts, plus all my documents and all my photos in drive, I'd be totally lost.
  - izzydata 7y ago
    Perhaps it is time to export all your emails and start forwarding any new emails to a backup email service. As well as backup any documents regularly to another service or personal drive. As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      Agreed... been giving more and more time for thought on how I want to handle this myself.
      - vorpalhex 7y ago
        I've already setup a domain in front of Protonmail so I have email under my control. My next step is to use an email client to fetch all my emails under IMAP so I have them outside of any cloud service.
kevindong 7y ago
I'm interested in why Google is partnering with Citi, assuming the rumors are true. Citi is notorious for having some of the worst tech amongst the churning community (churning is when you sign up for credit cards/bank accounts solely for the signup bonus which are ludicrously valuable in comparison to the ongoing rewards/perks of having the account; after the bonus is obtained you close the account and reopen it later once you are once again eligible for the signup bonus). I originally thought the adage was a joke, but it really isn't. I signed up for a Citi checking account (purely for the signup bonus) and they have two interfaces for transferring money to other banks. One looks new but outright doesn't work. The other looks old, but does work. 90% of the links on the Citi account dashboard point to the new/non-functional interface. The other 10% point to the old/functional interface. All of the confirmation emails received for transferring money were clearly generated by a very, very old system (plain text HTML with spaces/asterisks used to space out content). I also literally could not find the routing number for my checking account on their website. I had to use the live chat to ask for it. A non paywalled (but different) article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/13/google-checking-accounts-cache-citigroup-bank https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/13/google-ch...
- jpalomaki 7y ago
  On the other hand, maybe this is exactly why they are interested in partnering with Google. If the bank agrees that they are loosing on the technology side, it would definitely make sense (at least on the boardroom PowerPoint) to partner with one of the leading tech companies.
buboard 7y ago
Is there a history of people who went from entrepreneurship -> industry -> became rich -> opened a Bank? In older times these would be loan sharks but have other industrialists done that? And is this the best use of the mountains of cash that these companies (google-apple-facebook) have hoarded?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  J. P. Morgan, maybe (though I'm not sure you would say that he started at the entrepreneur level).
- awad 7y ago
  Financial services as a whole are inherently a large part of the economy so it's reasonable to see why they're going after it. Warren Buffet attributes a large part of his success to his insurance interests and the capital (to invest) made available to Berkshire Hathaway via the float. There's also the Japanese model of group companies centered around a bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fauigerzigerk 7y ago
So what happens if I'm posting too many emojis on youtube? [1] I know I'm losing my email account as well all my personal data on Google Drive and in Google Photos. Am I also going to lose my bank account if I'm careless enough to bank with Google? [1] https://www.insider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heist-lost-access-google-accounts-spamming-emotes-2019-11 https://www.insider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heist-lost-a...
kumarm 7y ago
I am surprised Google hasn't started Business Card similar to Amazon Business Card (5% cash back on AWS and Amazon Purchases). Businesses that use Google Ads (and Google Cloud) are far higher compared to who maintain a business account on Amazon. Wouldn't data on Business Purchases be higher in value?
- notyourwork 7y ago
  Higher in value to what? Consumer transaction data would be a valuable data set for purposes of targeted advertisements. Seems one hand washes the other.
  - kumarm 7y ago
    Google runs B2B Ads too.
    - notyourwork 7y ago
      I don't know this but I presume advertisement revenue from users is larger compared to revenue from B2B ads. Or at least that is my basis for why consumer transaction data would be more valuable as a supplement to advertisement targeting.
EasyTiger_ 7y ago
I would be way too stressed out about losing access due to the whims of google. This is about as tempting as a kick to the sacks.
durpleDrank 7y ago
Imagine having your entire life ruined (not being able to purchase food, pay your rent and or bills on time, etc) because you merely WATCHED a video that politically doesn't align with the majority of their employees? You are practically asking children to watch over your money at that point.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Isn't that stuff supposed to be in authoritarian china/soviets/1984/whatever?
  - postsantum 7y ago
    No, this is progressive Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
topicseed 7y ago
Wondering why it took Google so long to want to get there. The data mining that will occur on these checking accounts is valuable to their ad business. However, if they add some revolutionary features to it, happy to join. Or, they could just buy Revolut.
turc1656 7y ago
Count me out. I already stay away from them as much as possible (ProtonMail over Gmail, DuckDuckGo vs Google search, I never log in to youtube and on Android where you are required I always use incognito, etc., etc.). No way in hell I am going to give Google of all companies my complete financial transaction records so they can "analyze" it and sell it to someone. I'm sure my bank probably already does it but I'd rather them do it (smaller local bank) than have Google in possession of that information.
- jeanofthedead 7y ago
  I've made the switch to invidio.us, which let me import my subscriptions from YouTube. I love that you can switch out YT comments for Reddit comments, as well as the minimalistic appearance in general.
judge2020 7y ago
Temporarily disregarding the other concerns, I much more trust Google's security since they have the option to require a security key to login (Advanced Protection Program), no other bank I know of can do that for their customers' accounts. Having no phone support could also be seen as a positive to prevent social engineering, assuming you can get support over email or live chat.
- LegitShady 7y ago
  The concern isn't Google's security it's that google will ban you with poor customer service and no recourse
  - MichaelDickens 7y ago
    Presumably that's why GP said "Temporarily disregarding the other concerns".
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      Temporarily disregarding the issue at hand to talk about something unrelated is still off topic even if you disclaim it.
crb002 7y ago
They will use this data to create a hedge fund.
eiji 7y ago
Why is it that these gigantic SV companies can't manage to operate a bank? It's like they don't want to rock that boat.
tracker1 7y ago
For the same reasons I don't want Facebook to have a new crypto currency, just, no. While this isn't as bad... I just don't see this as particularly good. I, personally, think more people should favor smaller, local banks and credit unions over the large national banks as it is.
dmw_ng 7y ago
The first time I tried to break the cycle with Google was for NYE 2011, but Gmail was impossible to get rid of at the time. The last redesign has meant that I literally more than prefer Thunderbird nowadays, and it's no longer considered weird to not want e-mail/Facebook/etc on your phone, so I'm aiming to dump Gmail for real for 2020. Since they killed off so many services pretty much the only thing else that I use is Google Cloud. Current plan is - Disposable account for my phone until I replace it a new phone that has no identifying marks shared with the old account. Probably create a new disposable account for the replacement phone and disable sync - Otherwise unused Gmail account to own the gcloud stuff - Delete my domain, move e-mail to pretty much doesn't matter any more, I'm back to where the only thing I actually need is POP3. It's insane that somehow this happened but it did. It's 1998 all over again
- hnrodey 7y ago
  I switched to iCloud as my primary email account and use Mail on macOS and iOS. Good enough for how I use email. GMail is an awful experience these days and would consistently bury important messages (to me anyways) in the tabs/buckets (or whatever they're called) no matter how many times I would drag them back to Inbox/Primary.
zwkrt 7y ago
zwkrt’s Tenth Rule of Startups: Any sufficiently complicated tech company or venture-backed enterprise contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of a credit union.
FpUser 7y ago
Google did few good things. But now it is trying to substitute The Internet. Well thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick to my old luddite way of doing things.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
daphneokeefe 7y ago
So you have your paycheck direct-deposited, and you pay all your bills on this account, so Google now knows your income, your rent, your indebtedness, where you have all of your accouts (mortgage, auto loan, credit cards).
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they already know most of those things. They can be gleaned from things who I get email from in Gmail, things I Google, etc.
fmajid 7y ago
Even if you don't use their bank services, your financial privacy is not safe. The had a deal with MasterCard to gain access to credit card transactions: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
tehjoker 7y ago
Just gonna drop this here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by VI Lenin He discusses how financialization and concentration of economic power leads to the banks and large capitalists taking control of the economy and planning it to their benefit.
kerng 7y ago
I think this is one of those things that just should not be allowed.
joeyrideout 7y ago
From a contrarian investing perspective, the number of non-finance companies branching into finance indicates that we are near the end of this credit cycle. This is large-scale capitulation.
Endy 7y ago
My goodness. I don't even trust Google enough to let them have access to any of my financial or payment info. I'd rather keep cash under a mattress than trust them with holding money.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Proven 7y ago
If my bank wants me to close my account, they can let me know about their new partnership.
uoaei 7y ago
There is no reason for them to do this except to have 100% visibility into your purchasing behavior. To serve you more ads, better.
chrisseaton 7y ago
A checking account? Literally an account for writing checks from? How many people are writing checks these days?
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  Assuming you have money, where do you keep it?
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    In a current account. I don't need to write checks, ever.
    - EForEndeavour 7y ago
      That's a synonym for "checking account." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_account
- adamt 7y ago
  A checking account is what is called a current account in several other English speaking countries.
40acres 7y ago
One of the advantages of being a software engineer is that almost every industry needs software. One of the scariest things about a potential software monopoly is that every industry needs software.
NN88 7y ago
President Elizabeth Warren will put a stop to this.
bob_theslob646 7y ago
Can anyone think of any positives that this may have? All I have read is a ton of negative comments on this.
JeremySecond 7y ago
Banks already offer checking accounts - what will Google offer that they don't?
rhacker 7y ago
I am assuming they would want read-access to your account, transactions and all of this to help them build some ML to adapt advertising and other avenues. Google probably builds one of the most comprehensive profiles of each user it has. It will likely continue to find ways to get in more data businesses (hence this checking thing) to get more and more data. For google it doesn't even matter if they have people thinking about what to USE that data for. The algorithms they run will find correlations - transactions or otherwise - that might surface if you have HIV, are interested in porn, are worth hiring. It does not matter if these are questions they are thinking about - the ML will find those questions and answer them - and then tie that to all of their products, including advertising and selling profiles.
yariik 7y ago
Well, it's not just channel deletion anymore, soon they'll be able to deny thought criminals access to their money (in other words, steal their money). It'll eventually come to the point where thought criminals won't be able to get police protection or get healthcare. We live in a society, I guess.
mmartinson 7y ago
What are they checking for?
allthecybers 7y ago
We are un/intentionally creating single points of failure and dependance in our lives. We now depend on Amazon for all retail goods and (90%?) all web services and soon to be grocery shopping. Then Google is our email, documents, photos, cell phone provider, and now bank. I could Apple and FB, etc but this basically wipes out our life the minute we get locked out of our Google or Amazon accounts.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  And single points for, say, interested governments to collect information on us.
  - allthecybers 7y ago
    Yep and the marketing industrial complex... why not have all my banking/net worth info in the same data warehouse as my gmail, google voice/fi, photos and stored documents. Amazon can handle my healthcare, retail, shopping and household conversations.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
The article includes a chart from McKinsey showing what company users would trust more to handle their finances. Amazon is number one, Google is two, Apple is just behind Google, and Facebook is dead last. I can sort of understand putting Amazon first, though I personally wouldn’t, but I can’t imagine rating Google ahead of Apple. Apple isn’t perfect at services, but I would definitively trust it over Google with my money. As it stands, Google already has so much information on me, I’ll be damned if I would ever put my checking account into that. No. Just no.
AviationAtom 7y ago
Now you can get your checking account shutdown when Google decides to exit the business, instead of just your profile
sj4nz 7y ago
Let's write this out in TeX: $hell^{no}$
dreamcompiler 7y ago
First, who writes checks any more? Second, who the hell wants Google monitoring their financial transactions [more than they do already]? This just seems monumentally misguided.
jariel 7y ago
I'm wary of large scale intervention, partly because the powers that be can often get it very wrong - for example some of the EU initiatives are great, others are possibly disastrous ... But it might be time to consider regulations on social and search, and possibly isolation of such things from other businesses. In most countries, we separate the 'monopoly bit' (i.e. electricity transmission) from the competitive parts (i.e. actual energy creation) to keep things moving fairly. It's a rational separation. I suggest that 'search' is starting to become a very real public utility and it may be best to have search separate from other things, legally. I'm wary to see what an antagonising US Congress would really come up wit that's nuanced and helpful, but I suggest there's a basic formulation that just might work. It may seem bold at first glance, and upset a lot of the 'free market' types, but this did happen 100 years ago in the US. I'm wary of having Google in my home or giving them any insight into my finances, it's getting harder and harder to 'opt out'.
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185 points by Bostonian 7y ago

Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. It's one thing to offer an online product suite without any support, it's a completely other thing to offer a product that is as heavily regulated as banking services. They're probably not going to earn any significant amount from providing a checking account. I can only assume that they're after the transaction data itself (looking for patterns, etc.), but I find it hard to believe that the payoff would be large enough to endure the pain that is the current regulatory environment surrounding banking. Especially when you're notorious for avoiding personal interactions.

dannyr 7y ago
I have Google Fi and bought from Google Store. Their customer service has been fantastic. Maybe my experience is one of the few exceptions but I know a bunch of people who also had a great experience with customer support by Google.
- romanovcode 7y ago
  I just checked what it is. Isn't it a bit expensive? $70/m for a mobile plan seems ridicilous.
  - mankyd 7y ago
    That's for unlimited data. They offer a prorated, $10/gb plan as well.
  - watwatinthewat 7y ago
    Everyone I know with it does the $20/mo + $10/gb plan. If you don't use more than a gig or two a month, that's close to one of the cheapest plans around. There are some cheaper prepaid plans, though.
    - moooo99 7y ago
      Wow, and I thoughtmobile data in Germany was expensive. I pay 8€/m for 4GB. Although the LTE coverage is pretty bad with my provider.
      - JCharante 7y ago
        Yeah Data in the US is a bit ridiculous. You can get a GB of data in Vietnam for $0.50. I usually get the 16GB plan but buy it every twenty days.
        moooo99 7y ago
        Yeah I see why prices differ from country to country, but 10$/GB seems ridiculus.
        drstewart 7y ago
        8€/m for 4GB is ridiculous compared to Vietnam's price, yet you don't seem perturbed by that.
        jddj 7y ago
        That seems reasonable enough. The German and US economies are slightly more comparable, no?
      - Someone1234 7y ago
        Urban parts of the US are subsidizing large rural areas. Almost all plans are 50 state plans, which means you're paying to install and maintain cellphone coverage for mostly corn fields or forests in the middle of nowhere. Check out this map: https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg For costs to come down, you'd need people to adopt single-state or two/three state plans on the East/West coast. But starting such a network would be prohibitively expensive. For example an "only California" plan could likely be very inexpensive and comparable to Europe.
  - relaunched 7y ago
    said no one that lives in the US, ever! It always blows my mind how that whenever you go anywhere in the world, you can get amazing mobile plans (data and call / sms) for $10-$30 dollars per month.
    - jayshua 7y ago
      Probably has something to do with the size. I'd imagine covering a country like Denmark or Ireland is considerably easier and cheaper for a smaller company then covering the US would be.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        The EU and EAA - with a roughly similar land area and population to the US - has free roaming by law. Your French plan is good in Norway. The US could institute a similar regime that'd permit state/local carriers to exist and compete.
      - postsantum 7y ago
        You would be surprised to see prices for mobile Internet in Russia
        davchana 7y ago
        & in India.
        tylerhou 7y ago
        How is the rural coverage? Is it better than the rural coverage in the US?
        davchana 7y ago
        Yes, atleast 3G is everywhere, 4G is I think most of the places.
      - aliceryhl 7y ago
  - jelling 7y ago
    It's worth it if you travel internationally as you can just show up in (nearly) any country and not get gouged on data. Also, that price isn't bad for the U.S.
    - sulekhaholidays 7y ago
      yes you are right..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxgfWr9FvyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxgfWr9FvyM
  - delfinom 7y ago
    Welcome to America, bend over. $70/month is standard totally not collusion pricing for single line plans.
    - LandR 7y ago
      Wow, I get unlimited broadband internet for my home, mobile service (unlimited texts, 1000mins, 2GB data) and my landline for less than that!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - metasaval 7y ago
    I also use Google Fi, albeit the $10/gb plan, so my monthly bill is usually around $50-$60. The real reason I stick with it, even though I could get slightly cheaper plans elsewhere, is for international travel. I don't even travel internationally often at all, and I don't consider myself a foodie or world traveller or anything like that. But work is sending me to Taiwan in a couple weeks and it's nice knowing that I'll be able to land and have the same data and text rates as back home. Same for when I went on a cruise to Mexico with my family earlier this year. We landed, Google Fi sent me a text saying "give us a sec." And then a few minutes later I was online, without me having to do anything. Most cellular companies make you pay out the ass in international roaming costs, or if you have an unlocked phone you can get a local sim. The closest company to match this policy is T-Mobile, but their international data is capped at 256kbps unless you pay more.
- ckastner 7y ago
  Are those other experiences also with Google Fi, or was it some other product?
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    I got great experience with Google One support. Obviously if you're only using free services and not paying anything, you're not going to get great support.
- postsantum 7y ago
  My experience with google support ranges from non-existent to unhelpful garbage
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    What products do you pay for? Obviously you're not going to get support for a free service. Google One is a 2$/month subscription that gives you 100GB storage in Drive and Google Support. The support has been instant and quality so far.
    - postsantum 7y ago
      Android developer account. I'd expect more than canned bot responses for 30% revenue share
- jjulius 7y ago
  Yours is absolutely an exception. I also have Google Fi, but I had to create a second Google account in order to get it. I had Google Wallet years back. At one point while I was traveling, I lost my debit card and thankfully had my Google Wallet card as a backup. I was able to transfer money to the card from my checking account, though I only moved over what I needed for short periods of time. This resulted in multiple movements of money to my Google account, which in turn resulted in Google flagging this as suspicious and preventing that account from using Google to pay for anything (I couldn't even purchase via the Play Store even if I selected my non-Google debit/credit cards as payment methods). They asked for verification of who I am, and I supplied the correct documents to them multiple times. Each time I was told that those documents did not suffice with no explanation as to why they were not reauthorizing my account nor why the documents I sent them weren't up to their standards. Just "Nope, go away." For some dumb reason I insisted on proceeding with signing up for Fi, and found it super easy to just create a new Google account specifically for that. I've been increasingly uneasy about the longevity of this account because of that experience and realize now that it was probably foolish to migrate my phone service to a company that had already fucked me, but c'est la vie.
- notyourday 7y ago
  The measurement of customer service experience is not when someone can follow "if (X) then (Y)" with a customer on a phone. Rather it is when the CS person needs to resolve something that does not have "if (X) then (Y)" step in the manual.
profmonocle 7y ago
My first thought when I read this was all the horror stories of people's Google accounts being closed for no obvious reason, and with no recourse (other than going viral on social media and hoping a Googler notices.) Imagine that happening with your bank. I'm sure existing banking laws will restrict them from algorithmically banning people like this, but their reputation is bad enough to keep me away. It's the same reason I'll never use Google Domains or Google Fi - my domains and phone number are too important to lose access to.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > Imagine that happening with your bank. This already happens, a lot. Do something that generates a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report (generally, stuff that looks like money laundering) and your bank will cut you loose, and they aren't legally allowed to disclose why. Running a marijuana dispensary? Forget about a bank account.
  - teddyh 7y ago
    See also what credit card companies did to Wikileaks; i.e. they simply refused all their cardholders to donate money to Wikileaks.
    - globuous 7y ago
      Did not know that... now i understand bitcoin.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Because of the numerous chargebacks associated with plenty of people using other people's credit cards to make those donations. They weren't taking a political stance. If Wikileaks supporters had used their own credit cards Wikileaks could still take donations by credit card.
  - sharpneli 7y ago
    Sure. But with Google you will lose your bank account by making a comment on youtube livestream. It was here on HN few days ago. Streamer asked people to spam the chat just like in twitch, youtubes automated systems banned viewers who obliged locking them out of all google products, gmail etc. Now imagine losing also your banking due to things like that.
jacques_chester 7y ago
> Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. To reduce the threat of Apple from siphoning folks away from Android and thus disintermediating their advertising business. That's the reason they went into Android and Chrome and half-baked subscription services: to defend the advertising business. Nearly everything Google does out loud that's not GCP is ultimately motivated by the need to defend, sustain or grow the advertising business. The rest of what they do gets a lot of media attention but comes close to being a rounding error by comparison to ... the advertising business.
belorn 7y ago
It might seem perplexing when imagining a American bank, but from the perspective of Swedish banks, it make perfect sense. Any direct contact with customer is a cost center. Dealing with people, dealing with physical cash, checks, just having a office in city areas. It is all just very expensive. It is much cheaper to just have an online service with online products that get processed without human involvement. The result in Sweden is almost 40% less offices in the last 10 years and only a handful in existence that handle physical cash. Customers are a bit less satisfied but you can't really live in Sweden without having a bank account so what are people really to do but accept the change. Banks profits are up so the trend is likely to continue.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Banks in the US run back and forth on this, and probably always will. Less locations saves money. However locations mean places where your customers come in and you can sell them "add-on". A lot easier to talk to someone about their car insurance when they are already coming in every week anyway.
Braggadocious 7y ago
1. User/Business Data 2. They have the computing and engineering power to optimize pretty much anything beyond where it is today. 3. User/Business Data
- zer0tonin 7y ago
  Weren't they already buying the data from mastercard and visa?
  - Braggadocious 7y ago
    More data is more data.
jsonne 7y ago
Mastercard sells your data to advertisers for targeting with programmatic display, video etc. I suspect Google is just trying to do the same thing.
Accujack 7y ago
> I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. Money, as always. >They're probably not going to earn any significant amount from providing a checking account. That depends on specifics of the accounts and how they work. It's possible to make a lot of money off of just temporarily holding someone else's cash. Transfer firms like Moneygram make most of their cash off of interest on other people's money when it's being "sent" from one location to another. >I can only assume that they're after the transaction data itself (looking for patterns, etc.) This is the correct answer. The more data they can aggregate and cross-correlate, the more accurate their derived conclusions about the spending habits, psychology, and behavior of people can be. The more accurate those are, the more control, power, and money Google will have. I'm sure they don't "intend" that it will be used for anything unethical, but presently there are no laws forbidding them from doing anything at all with it as long as it's derived data. The overall effect of them doing this research is similar to a twilight zone plot... imagine a psychologist discovers a principle within the human mind that exists within everyone. When used, this discovery very strongly influences the target to buy whatever is on offer, to the level almost of a compulsion. Use of this knowledge is undetectable, but allows anyone who knows it to sell anything to anyone for any price they choose (within reason). That's what Google is trying to build.
- krustyburger 7y ago
  As much as I enjoy Twilight Zone comparisons, it is pretty hyperbolic to claim that Google is working toward the equivalent of mind control rays because they are obsessed with consumer data. People’s lack of openness to advertising attempts is going to continue to be a barrier to ads being perfectly effective, whether or not Google has banking data on top of Gmail data and regardless of how specifically targeted the ads are. People will still have free will (to the extent they ever have) no matter how individually tailored ads get.
  - ok_coo 7y ago
    I used to think to the same thing, that is until I saw the selfish ledger video. Yes, of course we have free will but I have a difficult time trusting a company that would put out something like this. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...
Spooky23 7y ago
They are front-ending the bank. It can drive value on the banking side and make customers stick to the Google service side. Think of things like communications with banks. If you could send me statements or notifications securely to Google Drive or GMail, that saves the bank money and drives value on the Google side. Banks and credit unions do this already. Your average credit union with a few hundred million in deposits is paying a provider to run all of the web and IVR services.
doctorpangloss 7y ago
Because Apple credit card.
jiveturkey 7y ago
reaction to Apple VISA? maybe android pay will be more valuable with direct checking tie-in.
awalton 7y ago
> I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. ... really? Google is the Consumer Intelligence Agency. All they want is all of your data on how you're spending your money, so they can sell more ads. There's no other lofty goals here but more access to how you and your money moves.

cm2187 7y ago

For those who think that google locking arbitrarily your google account isn't fun enough... And also for those who reject adblockers and are happy to see google roaming through all their financial transactions (and health information [1]) [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightingale-gathers-personal-health-data-on-millions-of-americans-11573496790?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=4 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightin...

kyrra 7y ago
For the health care data, Google goes through that data as it goes through any data that is hosted on GCP. Yes we are storing data for them and providing services ontop of it, but that is what cloud does. See: https://www.google.com/amp/s/cloudblog.withgoogle.com/topics/inside-google-cloud/our-partnership-with-ascension/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/cloudblog.withgoogle.com/topics... https://cloud.google.com/solutions/healthcare/ https://cloud.google.com/solutions/healthcare/ (I'm a Googler, opinions are my own)
mhb 7y ago
You mean like pretty much everyone who doesn't care that their Venmo transactions are public by default? Or so I've heard.
- beamatronic 7y ago
  What’s even worse is that to link Venmo to your bank account, you must share your bank credentials with Venmo!
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    You mean like when you hand a check to someone?
    - beamatronic 7y ago
      Bank login credentials

CPLX 7y ago

Every time I read another headline like this (and the healthcare one from yesterday) think of that scene from the Matrix. I realize it's not exactly a perfect metaphor, but nonetheless I have visions of an Agent Smith character saying something like this: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify Google and Amazon and Facebook and I realized that you're not actually businesses. Every business on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. A disease, a cancer of this planet.

trevyn 7y ago
Also humans!
- khawkins 7y ago
  Below replacement birth rates in 1st world societies seem to disprove the idea that humans inevitably expand to the point of environmental collapse. Further, having as many children as the environment can support, regardless of the consequences for the environment or its destruction, is natural for nearly every life form. Look at invasive species like Asian carp or zebra mussels.
  - SEJeff 7y ago
    Or other invasive species like Middle Management
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > Below replacement birth rates in 1st world societies seem to disprove the idea that humans inevitably expand to the point of environmental collapse. Or they're a warning sign of it. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm-counts-continue-to-fall/572794/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm-cou... > As new data emerge, however, many scientists now believe sperm counts have indeed fallen—and continue to fall. As a story in GQ noted earlier this year, a widely cited study published in 2017 by researchers from the Hebrew University and Mount Sinai’s medical school found that among nearly 43,000 men from North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, sperm counts per milliliter of semen had declined more than 50 percent from 1973 to 2011. And not only that, “but total sperm counts were down by almost 60 percent: We are producing less semen, and that semen has fewer sperm cells in it,” wrote the GQ contributor Daniel Noah Halpern. When Halpern asked several scientists why, they presented a united front: It was the unprecedented amount of chemicals now routinely entering the human body.

fmpwizard 7y ago

Besides the privacy risks with full on moving your banking to Google, I think another big issue is when they decide this product isn't profitable any more, and/or some other department in Google comes up with banking 2.0 and you end up having to move all your bill payments, auto draft, etc back out. If we thought killing Google Reader was bad, killing your bank app would be even worse.

stvswn 7y ago
JFC you guys and the Google Reader thing -- it's been six years, get a new canned response to every Google story.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  I really liked Inbox...
- scarmig 7y ago
  One hundred years from now, while Google surveils us 24/7, psychologically brainwashes us from birth, and sends the occasional Google drone to terminate users who violate ToS, you'll still have people on Hacker News bitching about Reader.
- carty76ers 7y ago
  It wasn’t just Reader... have you paid attention to the other stories?
  - SupersonicScrub 7y ago
    Here's the full list. The sheer size of it blows my mind whenever I look at it. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- fmpwizard 7y ago
  I didn't want to include the much longer list, if we look to more recent events, Google Play Music is in the process of being replaced by Youtube Music, but with way fewer features. I was also a Google Wallet user, and they killed it, Google Notebook, I'm sure I can keep going if I try to remember for a few more minutes.

Doctor_Fegg 7y ago

Because you should absolutely lose access to your money when Google's algorithms decide your YouTube comments are spam.

vorpalhex 7y ago
The Cast System of 2020: + Those with Amazon Prime and Google + Those with only Google + Those banned from Google
- _jal 7y ago
  - Heathen refuseniks who refuse to do business with any of them.
  - ivalm 7y ago
    those are just culled.
  - DannyB2 7y ago
    Those people don't exist.
- holeyness 7y ago
  *caste
  - postsantum 7y ago
    I think it was a part of joke referring to Google Cast
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      ...yes, yes that was it.. definitely..
- cardiffspaceman 7y ago
  Sorry but I can't tell who is the top caste in your system?

sdan 7y ago

What's next, Apple announcing Apple Cloud Services? This year has been crazy with how much big tech is trying to create walled gardens for consumers.

delfinom 7y ago
It's the only way to continue the infinite growth model. Maximize rent seeking.
- buboard 7y ago
  swimming in more cash than you can even think what to do with helps.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    Perhaps that's why they're getting into real estate.

mc32 7y ago

Hopefully they wont lock your accounts if you violate their TOS elsewhere in their ecosystem...

auiya 7y ago

What is the expected value-added Google intends to provide the banks?

donalhunt 7y ago
lower cost of doing business; better user experience¹. ¹ ymmv.

petschge 7y ago

This increasing spread of FAANG companies across all domains in an attempt to keep customers completely contained in their ecosystem reminds me of the megacorps in the Shadowrun universe. We are not too far away from the point where national law does not apply to them any more. It is certainly already hard to make tax laws stick. And all the googlers that are proud to slave away for that particular overlord remind me of the sarari men.

AJ007 7y ago
Rather than some sort of intentional cyberpunk dystopia I think in part what we are seeing is some pressure by American tech companies to emulate Chinese tech companies such as Tencent. One app to rule them all, perhaps would make a good catch phrase. Some of it is a mix of offense and defense, just trying to copy each other and expecting zero margin while preventing a loss in market share. The national law avoidance, tax avoidance, are both being dealt with by EU. Google is being incredibly cagey about how much of a material impact this is going to have on their business. I don't believe they are complying with GDPR, among other things. Google / Alphabet has basically handcuffed themselves and thrown out the keys in the EU vivisection room. If you examine Google / Alphabet's position in the US, they went from being the most frequent visitor of the Obama White House (something like weekly visits) to be vilified by the far right, the far left, and the center. The customers that still trust Google have been left largely in the dark and don't read the news. I've been negative on Google for about a decade now, arriving to the party far in advance of everyone else. I saw the tricks they were pulling back then when they were celebrated. Yesterday's story about Google working with Ascension was extraordinarily shocking. There are, of course, serious privacy issues, and that dominated the headlines. What is truly appalling is that Google is using their artificial intelligence / machine learning work to help a major healthcare company "extract more revenue from patients" (WSJ.) Google has veered so far off course, one wonders if Larry Page and Sergey Brin may be suffering from head injuries or dementia, or just drowned themselves in their own hubris. It starts to sound a lot like OpenAI, where there tech firms believe they are going to do something so substantial, are execute above and beyond what anyone else is capable of, that the entire world is there's for the taking. It is more likely that these companies will cease to exist, by a wide margin. With or without regulators. The more pots they stick their hands in, the less consumers will trust them. We already see it here on hn, people no longer bother to try new Google products because we don't believe those products will still be around in a few years. What happens when the early adapters reject your products?

williesleg 7y ago

Citibank is offering the card, Google is slurping the data. No big deal.

zimbatm 7y ago

Recently, Google suspended accounts for using Emoji comments on YouTube. This is the whole account, including Gmail access[1]. Now imaging your checking account also got disabled because some bot decided that you looked suspicious. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be

arcticbull 7y ago
Man I can't wait until they cancel this product too, and I have to migrate my money back to my current bank. I'll save myself the leg-work ;)
eloff 7y ago
And there is almost no way to talk to a human and get access back. I like Google's services, but I think their ability to deny service with no recourse is shameful. If I lost my gmail account with my last fifteen years of emails, linked to ask my other online accounts, plus all my documents and all my photos in drive, I'd be totally lost.
- izzydata 7y ago
  Perhaps it is time to export all your emails and start forwarding any new emails to a backup email service. As well as backup any documents regularly to another service or personal drive. As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Agreed... been giving more and more time for thought on how I want to handle this myself.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      I've already setup a domain in front of Protonmail so I have email under my control. My next step is to use an email client to fetch all my emails under IMAP so I have them outside of any cloud service.

kevindong 7y ago

I'm interested in why Google is partnering with Citi, assuming the rumors are true. Citi is notorious for having some of the worst tech amongst the churning community (churning is when you sign up for credit cards/bank accounts solely for the signup bonus which are ludicrously valuable in comparison to the ongoing rewards/perks of having the account; after the bonus is obtained you close the account and reopen it later once you are once again eligible for the signup bonus). I originally thought the adage was a joke, but it really isn't. I signed up for a Citi checking account (purely for the signup bonus) and they have two interfaces for transferring money to other banks. One looks new but outright doesn't work. The other looks old, but does work. 90% of the links on the Citi account dashboard point to the new/non-functional interface. The other 10% point to the old/functional interface. All of the confirmation emails received for transferring money were clearly generated by a very, very old system (plain text HTML with spaces/asterisks used to space out content). I also literally could not find the routing number for my checking account on their website. I had to use the live chat to ask for it. A non paywalled (but different) article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/13/google-checking-accounts-cache-citigroup-bank https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/13/google-ch...

jpalomaki 7y ago
On the other hand, maybe this is exactly why they are interested in partnering with Google. If the bank agrees that they are loosing on the technology side, it would definitely make sense (at least on the boardroom PowerPoint) to partner with one of the leading tech companies.

buboard 7y ago

Is there a history of people who went from entrepreneurship -> industry -> became rich -> opened a Bank? In older times these would be loan sharks but have other industrialists done that? And is this the best use of the mountains of cash that these companies (google-apple-facebook) have hoarded?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
J. P. Morgan, maybe (though I'm not sure you would say that he started at the entrepreneur level).
awad 7y ago
Financial services as a whole are inherently a large part of the economy so it's reasonable to see why they're going after it. Warren Buffet attributes a large part of his success to his insurance interests and the capital (to invest) made available to Berkshire Hathaway via the float. There's also the Japanese model of group companies centered around a bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fauigerzigerk 7y ago

So what happens if I'm posting too many emojis on youtube? [1] I know I'm losing my email account as well all my personal data on Google Drive and in Google Photos. Am I also going to lose my bank account if I'm careless enough to bank with Google? [1] https://www.insider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heist-lost-access-google-accounts-spamming-emotes-2019-11 https://www.insider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heist-lost-a...

kumarm 7y ago

I am surprised Google hasn't started Business Card similar to Amazon Business Card (5% cash back on AWS and Amazon Purchases). Businesses that use Google Ads (and Google Cloud) are far higher compared to who maintain a business account on Amazon. Wouldn't data on Business Purchases be higher in value?

notyourwork 7y ago
Higher in value to what? Consumer transaction data would be a valuable data set for purposes of targeted advertisements. Seems one hand washes the other.
- kumarm 7y ago
  Google runs B2B Ads too.
  - notyourwork 7y ago
    I don't know this but I presume advertisement revenue from users is larger compared to revenue from B2B ads. Or at least that is my basis for why consumer transaction data would be more valuable as a supplement to advertisement targeting.

EasyTiger_ 7y ago

I would be way too stressed out about losing access due to the whims of google. This is about as tempting as a kick to the sacks.

durpleDrank 7y ago

Imagine having your entire life ruined (not being able to purchase food, pay your rent and or bills on time, etc) because you merely WATCHED a video that politically doesn't align with the majority of their employees? You are practically asking children to watch over your money at that point.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
friendlybus 7y ago
Isn't that stuff supposed to be in authoritarian china/soviets/1984/whatever?
- postsantum 7y ago
  No, this is progressive Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

topicseed 7y ago

Wondering why it took Google so long to want to get there. The data mining that will occur on these checking accounts is valuable to their ad business. However, if they add some revolutionary features to it, happy to join. Or, they could just buy Revolut.

turc1656 7y ago

Count me out. I already stay away from them as much as possible (ProtonMail over Gmail, DuckDuckGo vs Google search, I never log in to youtube and on Android where you are required I always use incognito, etc., etc.). No way in hell I am going to give Google of all companies my complete financial transaction records so they can "analyze" it and sell it to someone. I'm sure my bank probably already does it but I'd rather them do it (smaller local bank) than have Google in possession of that information.

jeanofthedead 7y ago
I've made the switch to invidio.us, which let me import my subscriptions from YouTube. I love that you can switch out YT comments for Reddit comments, as well as the minimalistic appearance in general.

judge2020 7y ago

Temporarily disregarding the other concerns, I much more trust Google's security since they have the option to require a security key to login (Advanced Protection Program), no other bank I know of can do that for their customers' accounts. Having no phone support could also be seen as a positive to prevent social engineering, assuming you can get support over email or live chat.

LegitShady 7y ago
The concern isn't Google's security it's that google will ban you with poor customer service and no recourse
- MichaelDickens 7y ago
  Presumably that's why GP said "Temporarily disregarding the other concerns".
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    Temporarily disregarding the issue at hand to talk about something unrelated is still off topic even if you disclaim it.

crb002 7y ago

They will use this data to create a hedge fund.

eiji 7y ago

Why is it that these gigantic SV companies can't manage to operate a bank? It's like they don't want to rock that boat.

tracker1 7y ago

For the same reasons I don't want Facebook to have a new crypto currency, just, no. While this isn't as bad... I just don't see this as particularly good. I, personally, think more people should favor smaller, local banks and credit unions over the large national banks as it is.

dmw_ng 7y ago

The first time I tried to break the cycle with Google was for NYE 2011, but Gmail was impossible to get rid of at the time. The last redesign has meant that I literally more than prefer Thunderbird nowadays, and it's no longer considered weird to not want e-mail/Facebook/etc on your phone, so I'm aiming to dump Gmail for real for 2020. Since they killed off so many services pretty much the only thing else that I use is Google Cloud. Current plan is - Disposable account for my phone until I replace it a new phone that has no identifying marks shared with the old account. Probably create a new disposable account for the replacement phone and disable sync - Otherwise unused Gmail account to own the gcloud stuff - Delete my domain, move e-mail to pretty much doesn't matter any more, I'm back to where the only thing I actually need is POP3. It's insane that somehow this happened but it did. It's 1998 all over again

hnrodey 7y ago
I switched to iCloud as my primary email account and use Mail on macOS and iOS. Good enough for how I use email. GMail is an awful experience these days and would consistently bury important messages (to me anyways) in the tabs/buckets (or whatever they're called) no matter how many times I would drag them back to Inbox/Primary.

zwkrt 7y ago

zwkrt’s Tenth Rule of Startups: Any sufficiently complicated tech company or venture-backed enterprise contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of a credit union.

FpUser 7y ago

Google did few good things. But now it is trying to substitute The Internet. Well thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick to my old luddite way of doing things.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

daphneokeefe 7y ago

So you have your paycheck direct-deposited, and you pay all your bills on this account, so Google now knows your income, your rent, your indebtedness, where you have all of your accouts (mortgage, auto loan, credit cards).

Rebelgecko 7y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they already know most of those things. They can be gleaned from things who I get email from in Gmail, things I Google, etc.

fmajid 7y ago

Even if you don't use their bank services, your financial privacy is not safe. The had a deal with MasterCard to gain access to credit card transactions: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...

tehjoker 7y ago

Just gonna drop this here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by VI Lenin He discusses how financialization and concentration of economic power leads to the banks and large capitalists taking control of the economy and planning it to their benefit.

kerng 7y ago

I think this is one of those things that just should not be allowed.

joeyrideout 7y ago

From a contrarian investing perspective, the number of non-finance companies branching into finance indicates that we are near the end of this credit cycle. This is large-scale capitulation.

Endy 7y ago

My goodness. I don't even trust Google enough to let them have access to any of my financial or payment info. I'd rather keep cash under a mattress than trust them with holding money.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Proven 7y ago

If my bank wants me to close my account, they can let me know about their new partnership.

uoaei 7y ago

There is no reason for them to do this except to have 100% visibility into your purchasing behavior. To serve you more ads, better.

chrisseaton 7y ago

A checking account? Literally an account for writing checks from? How many people are writing checks these days?

EForEndeavour 7y ago
Assuming you have money, where do you keep it?
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  In a current account. I don't need to write checks, ever.
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    That's a synonym for "checking account." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_account
adamt 7y ago
A checking account is what is called a current account in several other English speaking countries.

40acres 7y ago

One of the advantages of being a software engineer is that almost every industry needs software. One of the scariest things about a potential software monopoly is that every industry needs software.

NN88 7y ago

President Elizabeth Warren will put a stop to this.

bob_theslob646 7y ago

Can anyone think of any positives that this may have? All I have read is a ton of negative comments on this.

JeremySecond 7y ago

Banks already offer checking accounts - what will Google offer that they don't?

rhacker 7y ago

I am assuming they would want read-access to your account, transactions and all of this to help them build some ML to adapt advertising and other avenues. Google probably builds one of the most comprehensive profiles of each user it has. It will likely continue to find ways to get in more data businesses (hence this checking thing) to get more and more data. For google it doesn't even matter if they have people thinking about what to USE that data for. The algorithms they run will find correlations - transactions or otherwise - that might surface if you have HIV, are interested in porn, are worth hiring. It does not matter if these are questions they are thinking about - the ML will find those questions and answer them - and then tie that to all of their products, including advertising and selling profiles.

yariik 7y ago

Well, it's not just channel deletion anymore, soon they'll be able to deny thought criminals access to their money (in other words, steal their money). It'll eventually come to the point where thought criminals won't be able to get police protection or get healthcare. We live in a society, I guess.

mmartinson 7y ago

What are they checking for?

allthecybers 7y ago

We are un/intentionally creating single points of failure and dependance in our lives. We now depend on Amazon for all retail goods and (90%?) all web services and soon to be grocery shopping. Then Google is our email, documents, photos, cell phone provider, and now bank. I could Apple and FB, etc but this basically wipes out our life the minute we get locked out of our Google or Amazon accounts.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago
And single points for, say, interested governments to collect information on us.
- allthecybers 7y ago
  Yep and the marketing industrial complex... why not have all my banking/net worth info in the same data warehouse as my gmail, google voice/fi, photos and stored documents. Amazon can handle my healthcare, retail, shopping and household conversations.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

The article includes a chart from McKinsey showing what company users would trust more to handle their finances. Amazon is number one, Google is two, Apple is just behind Google, and Facebook is dead last. I can sort of understand putting Amazon first, though I personally wouldn’t, but I can’t imagine rating Google ahead of Apple. Apple isn’t perfect at services, but I would definitively trust it over Google with my money. As it stands, Google already has so much information on me, I’ll be damned if I would ever put my checking account into that. No. Just no.

AviationAtom 7y ago

Now you can get your checking account shutdown when Google decides to exit the business, instead of just your profile

sj4nz 7y ago

Let's write this out in TeX: $hell^{no}$

dreamcompiler 7y ago

First, who writes checks any more? Second, who the hell wants Google monitoring their financial transactions [more than they do already]? This just seems monumentally misguided.

jariel 7y ago

I'm wary of large scale intervention, partly because the powers that be can often get it very wrong - for example some of the EU initiatives are great, others are possibly disastrous ... But it might be time to consider regulations on social and search, and possibly isolation of such things from other businesses. In most countries, we separate the 'monopoly bit' (i.e. electricity transmission) from the competitive parts (i.e. actual energy creation) to keep things moving fairly. It's a rational separation. I suggest that 'search' is starting to become a very real public utility and it may be best to have search separate from other things, legally. I'm wary to see what an antagonising US Congress would really come up wit that's nuanced and helpful, but I suggest there's a basic formulation that just might work. It may seem bold at first glance, and upset a lot of the 'free market' types, but this did happen 100 years ago in the US. I'm wary of having Google in my home or giving them any insight into my finances, it's getting harder and harder to 'opt out'.

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