9 ms·

Google Drops Plan to Offer Bank Accounts

81 points by infodocket 5y ago

kyrra 5y ago
Original article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-is-scrapping-its-plan-to-offer-bank-accounts-to-users-11633104001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-is-scrapping-its-plan-to... Mirror: https://archive.is/DfNpk https://archive.is/DfNpk Googler, opinions are my own. This was an ambitious product. It was lead by Caesar Sengupta, who left back in March. Without the project's primary driver, it got killed off (at least before it launched).
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  This seems like another incredible example of a bad product management strategy of "whatever some employee wants to do". Why would a major product direction be shelved because one guy switched jobs? If it was a good product, Google should restaff the project. If it was not a good product, Google should seriously rethink the autonomy it gives staff to decide to launch new products.
  - cat199 5y ago
    he moved fast, and things broke - what's not to like?
  - kevmo314 5y ago
    Seems like a pretty good strategy to me. It's cool that one employee can drive such a large change. Google should get better at retaining talent though to mitigate this type of risk.
    - kyrra 5y ago
      Caeser was a VP at Google. In the story from when he left[0], his replacement has 3,700 people under him. So it's a single person with a huge amount of influence. Bill Ready came in and decided to do something different. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251591
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    > This seems like another incredible example of a bad product management strategy of "whatever some employee wants to do". It would be bad if they used this strategy for every employee, but for certain employees, notably, those who are likely to go found their own startups, it can be a great idea. Google gets the potential to finance a "startup" for a fraction of the hypothetical acquisition costs, and the downside is paying the salary of a few dead weights if the produce never takes off.
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      I understand that concept, but there are better ways to do that. Nobody is shocked when an Area 120 app (or a Microsoft Garage app) gets shelved, because those are "brands" specifically for Google and Microsoft to experiment with startupy apps. But when Google decides to put their main brand behind something, announce it to the world, start collecting signups, only to shut it down, that ends up continuing to burn the company's reputation. In this case, it also represented a significant partnership with a major bank, which may have burned some bridges along the way. And bear in mind, in this case, it sounds like this VP had 3,700 employees under him... hardly a trivial cost of all the wasted effort.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- xnx 5y ago
  I'm a huge fan of Google and was interested to see where this initiative went. After seeing how Google Pay went (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-new-google-pay-repeats-all-the-same-mistakes-of-google-allo/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-new-google-pay-r...), the world may not have missed out on much.
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    The Google Pay thing is a bit odd, because the new one is only actually available in 3 of the 40 countries that Google Pay supports - most places are still using the old one.
- tlogan 5y ago
  I think he left because he knew that the project will be killed.
  - latchkey 5y ago
    He was at Google for 15 years. Now working on something else in finance (and he is based in Singapore). https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/next-billion-users-head-caesar-sengupta-is-leaving-google/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/next-billion-users-head-ca... https://www.arbo.works/ https://www.arbo.works/
  - r00fus 5y ago
    I wonder how the lead of an ambitious project like this one gets wind of an upcoming project cancellation? Is it changing business needs, or political winds shifting?
    - arthurcolle 5y ago
      You can frequently see the writing on the wall even if its not explicitly made clear, especially in a megacorp
- cronix 5y ago
  > Without the project's primary driver Google has never heard of single points of failure? Strange. Is this how all of your products are run, in that if the "head" of the project leaves/gets ill/dies the whole thing just vaporizes?
  - cjsplat 5y ago
    You jumped from a story about one emerging business line concept to "all of your products", which is a pretty big leap. It is actually very common for new business ideas to live or die based on the support from one senior executive - I saw this from the inside at Fujitsu, Oracle, Sun and Google, and at many partner companies from the outside. In a new business line at an established large company, there is almost always another business line executive's toes you are going to step on. For example, making computer hardware at Oracle steps on the toes of Oracle people selling to computer hardware makers. Shifting to open source steps on toes of internal developers and existing suppliers. It takes a executive support to maintain these kinds of programs until the expected gain can be evaluated fairly against than the risks. If a key executive leaves there is quite often blow back on their pet projects. From the perspective "outside the room" it is frequently unclear whether the exec was just moving on, fighting to the end, or saw the writing on the wall and left while the leaving was good.
jrm4 5y ago
As someone who generally likes Google, I'm glad this is not happening. No currently large tech company should also be a bank; that level of extreme consolidation can only end in a negative for users.
- tadfisher 5y ago
  Google would have been a frontend, like any other neobank. Plex accounts would have been offered by Citi, BBVA (RIP), and other chartered financial institutions. No consolidation necessary, or worth it; retail banking is so heavily regulated that it's more of a loss-leader for other products that actually make money.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    Google would have been a frontend at first. Retail banking is so currently heavily regulated. etc. etc.
  - Zafira 5y ago
    I feel like this would have been a culture clash waiting to happen and I feel like it would drive Google to eventually create some sort of bank subsidiary if this had actually worked out. That said, I can't imagine the customer service experience with Google fronting a bank would be very good and random failures on free services are enough of a pain, now put actual money in it and watch people really flip out.
- ikiris 5y ago
  I actually disagree here, nothing would have stomped down on their account support abuse faster than them being a bank and fucking over people.
kintamanimatt 5y ago
With their track record of discontinuing products I wouldn’t dream of signing up, even if it were offered and amazing. Who knows when the rug would be pulled out from under my fiscal feet?
- alyandon 5y ago
  That or having an algorithm incorrectly decide you are a bad actor and immediately freezing your account with no real recourse other than appealing the decision via webform only to have it denied 7/10ths of a second after you submit it.
  - NazakiAid 5y ago
    Don't forget the linked Google Account and YouTube account getting banned as well
- brundolf 5y ago
  Unlike the other areas Google operates in, banking is actually regulated even in the US Though I'm sure we would quickly discover the exact boundaries of what's allowed by said regulation
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paxys 5y ago
Healthcare, banking/finance, cars, telecom – it seems like every time a big tech "disruptor" enters a highly regulated industry they get a healthy dose of reality.
- patrickaljord 5y ago
  More like, they realize "heavy regulations" are meant to protect incumbents from having to compete against new actors.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Or regulations evolve slowly to protect against outliars which tend to be ignored otherwise.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Not arguing that regulation is corrupt and broken in a lot of ways, but it's also not hard to see that the usual "move fast and break things" development and shipping process in tech should not be used in areas where people's livelihoods (or lives) are on the line.
paulpauper 5y ago
Oh your google account was disabled for covid misinformation (or some other reason), so you cannot access your money anymore. I wold trust amazon to do this more than google.
- htrp 5y ago
  Banks are heavily regulated for a reason
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sb057 5y ago
    Banks have successfully and legally blacklisted pornographers for decades due to "reputational risk".
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      But pornography is a high chargeback/fraud sector so that is aligned with banks doing risk control. Ideally a bank would capitalize on the underserved market and find a way to manage the risk.
      - bastardoperator 5y ago
        Merchant banks already do exactly this. There is no shortage of banks working with the adult industry, just higher transaction fees and other stipulations.
      - xnyan 5y ago
        >aligned with banks doing risk control This goes beyond risk control. Insurance has had this figured out for a long time. You can model the risk of porn chargebacks and charge fees accordingly that cover the increased risk of chargeback. Bank behavior towards adult entertainment is a reflection of prevailing attitude of society in which we live, which is frequently quite opposed to sex work. It's not a question of banks demanding much higher feels for legal adult services, they don't want them.
encryptluks2 5y ago
I was actually excited about this. I was under the impression at least with Plex, I would have more advanced banking opportunities. SFCU's app sucks by itself. With Plex not happening, it would be nice if they could at least revert their awful new Pay app. Not being able to send money online and the new fees make GPay essentially useless.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I don't understand how they could fuck Google Pay up so bad. At least there's Venmo.
x-shadowban 5y ago
They ought to do medical insurance, they might get it right, and maybe we'd get some kind of standard electronic medical representation out of it. You could get physical illness alerts along with your windows defender pop ups. Imagine the good (yeah yeah and bad) they could do with that. "Your surgery is eight dollars but we keep the 4GiB of images we make."
- nexuist 5y ago
  My understanding is that it is practically impossible to launch a health insurance company today, even with Google's budget, because the laws are so complex and impossible to digest that there is no way to sign up customers at a worthwhile rate.
  - deadmutex 5y ago
    I thought most big companies self-insured. So, does that make them insurance companies? Hmm, I guess you still have "insurance" at big companies, and they negotiate rates... so maybe the large insurance companies are still involved in a significant way.
atkbrah 5y ago
Google has managed to make themselves a startup of established companies: You never know when the service you are relying on gets discontinued.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bookofjoe 5y ago
https://archive.ph/UVSWB https://archive.ph/UVSWB
slownews45 5y ago
For the best. Just today we have (another) situation - user added a card that works for apple pay to google pay, but google pay not only didn't add it but suspended the account entirely. They rely on google pay for google fi, so are now likely to lose their phone number. https://www.reddit.com/r/googlepay/comments/pmyog8/what_can_i_do_if_my_gpay_account_got_suspended/ https://www.reddit.com/r/googlepay/comments/pmyog8/what_can_... Customer support is no help (of course). If Amazon did this it would be a different story, but google just takes craps on the users on their way to the bank - I can't imagine them having enough customer service focus to manage a bank type offering!
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
No worries, I’ll just use my Facebook bank account.
wetpaws 5y ago
I can't imagine anyone who in a sane mind will trust Google a single cent nowadays given their disastrous reputation both in term of product support and a customer experience.
notyourwork 5y ago
With their willingness to kill products, my bank account is far from ever to be something I would slap the G brand on.

81 points by infodocket 5y ago

Original article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-is-scrapping-its-plan-to-offer-bank-accounts-to-users-11633104001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-is-scrapping-its-plan-to... Mirror: https://archive.is/DfNpk https://archive.is/DfNpk Googler, opinions are my own. This was an ambitious product. It was lead by Caesar Sengupta, who left back in March. Without the project's primary driver, it got killed off (at least before it launched).

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
This seems like another incredible example of a bad product management strategy of "whatever some employee wants to do". Why would a major product direction be shelved because one guy switched jobs? If it was a good product, Google should restaff the project. If it was not a good product, Google should seriously rethink the autonomy it gives staff to decide to launch new products.
- cat199 5y ago
  he moved fast, and things broke - what's not to like?
- kevmo314 5y ago
  Seems like a pretty good strategy to me. It's cool that one employee can drive such a large change. Google should get better at retaining talent though to mitigate this type of risk.
  - kyrra 5y ago
    Caeser was a VP at Google. In the story from when he left[0], his replacement has 3,700 people under him. So it's a single person with a huge amount of influence. Bill Ready came in and decided to do something different. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251591
- mywittyname 5y ago
  > This seems like another incredible example of a bad product management strategy of "whatever some employee wants to do". It would be bad if they used this strategy for every employee, but for certain employees, notably, those who are likely to go found their own startups, it can be a great idea. Google gets the potential to finance a "startup" for a fraction of the hypothetical acquisition costs, and the downside is paying the salary of a few dead weights if the produce never takes off.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    I understand that concept, but there are better ways to do that. Nobody is shocked when an Area 120 app (or a Microsoft Garage app) gets shelved, because those are "brands" specifically for Google and Microsoft to experiment with startupy apps. But when Google decides to put their main brand behind something, announce it to the world, start collecting signups, only to shut it down, that ends up continuing to burn the company's reputation. In this case, it also represented a significant partnership with a major bank, which may have burned some bridges along the way. And bear in mind, in this case, it sounds like this VP had 3,700 employees under him... hardly a trivial cost of all the wasted effort.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xnx 5y ago
I'm a huge fan of Google and was interested to see where this initiative went. After seeing how Google Pay went (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-new-google-pay-repeats-all-the-same-mistakes-of-google-allo/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-new-google-pay-r...), the world may not have missed out on much.
- Marsymars 5y ago
  The Google Pay thing is a bit odd, because the new one is only actually available in 3 of the 40 countries that Google Pay supports - most places are still using the old one.
tlogan 5y ago
I think he left because he knew that the project will be killed.
- latchkey 5y ago
  He was at Google for 15 years. Now working on something else in finance (and he is based in Singapore). https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/next-billion-users-head-caesar-sengupta-is-leaving-google/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/next-billion-users-head-ca... https://www.arbo.works/ https://www.arbo.works/
- r00fus 5y ago
  I wonder how the lead of an ambitious project like this one gets wind of an upcoming project cancellation? Is it changing business needs, or political winds shifting?
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    You can frequently see the writing on the wall even if its not explicitly made clear, especially in a megacorp
cronix 5y ago
> Without the project's primary driver Google has never heard of single points of failure? Strange. Is this how all of your products are run, in that if the "head" of the project leaves/gets ill/dies the whole thing just vaporizes?
- cjsplat 5y ago
  You jumped from a story about one emerging business line concept to "all of your products", which is a pretty big leap. It is actually very common for new business ideas to live or die based on the support from one senior executive - I saw this from the inside at Fujitsu, Oracle, Sun and Google, and at many partner companies from the outside. In a new business line at an established large company, there is almost always another business line executive's toes you are going to step on. For example, making computer hardware at Oracle steps on the toes of Oracle people selling to computer hardware makers. Shifting to open source steps on toes of internal developers and existing suppliers. It takes a executive support to maintain these kinds of programs until the expected gain can be evaluated fairly against than the risks. If a key executive leaves there is quite often blow back on their pet projects. From the perspective "outside the room" it is frequently unclear whether the exec was just moving on, fighting to the end, or saw the writing on the wall and left while the leaving was good.

jrm4 5y ago

As someone who generally likes Google, I'm glad this is not happening. No currently large tech company should also be a bank; that level of extreme consolidation can only end in a negative for users.

tadfisher 5y ago
Google would have been a frontend, like any other neobank. Plex accounts would have been offered by Citi, BBVA (RIP), and other chartered financial institutions. No consolidation necessary, or worth it; retail banking is so heavily regulated that it's more of a loss-leader for other products that actually make money.
- jrm4 5y ago
  Google would have been a frontend at first. Retail banking is so currently heavily regulated. etc. etc.
- Zafira 5y ago
  I feel like this would have been a culture clash waiting to happen and I feel like it would drive Google to eventually create some sort of bank subsidiary if this had actually worked out. That said, I can't imagine the customer service experience with Google fronting a bank would be very good and random failures on free services are enough of a pain, now put actual money in it and watch people really flip out.
ikiris 5y ago
I actually disagree here, nothing would have stomped down on their account support abuse faster than them being a bank and fucking over people.

kintamanimatt 5y ago

With their track record of discontinuing products I wouldn’t dream of signing up, even if it were offered and amazing. Who knows when the rug would be pulled out from under my fiscal feet?

alyandon 5y ago
That or having an algorithm incorrectly decide you are a bad actor and immediately freezing your account with no real recourse other than appealing the decision via webform only to have it denied 7/10ths of a second after you submit it.
- NazakiAid 5y ago
  Don't forget the linked Google Account and YouTube account getting banned as well
brundolf 5y ago
Unlike the other areas Google operates in, banking is actually regulated even in the US Though I'm sure we would quickly discover the exact boundaries of what's allowed by said regulation
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

paxys 5y ago

Healthcare, banking/finance, cars, telecom – it seems like every time a big tech "disruptor" enters a highly regulated industry they get a healthy dose of reality.

patrickaljord 5y ago
More like, they realize "heavy regulations" are meant to protect incumbents from having to compete against new actors.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Or regulations evolve slowly to protect against outliars which tend to be ignored otherwise.
- paxys 5y ago
  Not arguing that regulation is corrupt and broken in a lot of ways, but it's also not hard to see that the usual "move fast and break things" development and shipping process in tech should not be used in areas where people's livelihoods (or lives) are on the line.

paulpauper 5y ago

Oh your google account was disabled for covid misinformation (or some other reason), so you cannot access your money anymore. I wold trust amazon to do this more than google.

htrp 5y ago
Banks are heavily regulated for a reason
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sb057 5y ago
  Banks have successfully and legally blacklisted pornographers for decades due to "reputational risk".
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    But pornography is a high chargeback/fraud sector so that is aligned with banks doing risk control. Ideally a bank would capitalize on the underserved market and find a way to manage the risk.
    - bastardoperator 5y ago
      Merchant banks already do exactly this. There is no shortage of banks working with the adult industry, just higher transaction fees and other stipulations.
    - xnyan 5y ago
      >aligned with banks doing risk control This goes beyond risk control. Insurance has had this figured out for a long time. You can model the risk of porn chargebacks and charge fees accordingly that cover the increased risk of chargeback. Bank behavior towards adult entertainment is a reflection of prevailing attitude of society in which we live, which is frequently quite opposed to sex work. It's not a question of banks demanding much higher feels for legal adult services, they don't want them.

encryptluks2 5y ago

I was actually excited about this. I was under the impression at least with Plex, I would have more advanced banking opportunities. SFCU's app sucks by itself. With Plex not happening, it would be nice if they could at least revert their awful new Pay app. Not being able to send money online and the new fees make GPay essentially useless.

DangitBobby 5y ago
I don't understand how they could fuck Google Pay up so bad. At least there's Venmo.

x-shadowban 5y ago

They ought to do medical insurance, they might get it right, and maybe we'd get some kind of standard electronic medical representation out of it. You could get physical illness alerts along with your windows defender pop ups. Imagine the good (yeah yeah and bad) they could do with that. "Your surgery is eight dollars but we keep the 4GiB of images we make."

nexuist 5y ago
My understanding is that it is practically impossible to launch a health insurance company today, even with Google's budget, because the laws are so complex and impossible to digest that there is no way to sign up customers at a worthwhile rate.
- deadmutex 5y ago
  I thought most big companies self-insured. So, does that make them insurance companies? Hmm, I guess you still have "insurance" at big companies, and they negotiate rates... so maybe the large insurance companies are still involved in a significant way.

atkbrah 5y ago

Google has managed to make themselves a startup of established companies: You never know when the service you are relying on gets discontinued.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bookofjoe 5y ago

https://archive.ph/UVSWB https://archive.ph/UVSWB

slownews45 5y ago

For the best. Just today we have (another) situation - user added a card that works for apple pay to google pay, but google pay not only didn't add it but suspended the account entirely. They rely on google pay for google fi, so are now likely to lose their phone number. https://www.reddit.com/r/googlepay/comments/pmyog8/what_can_i_do_if_my_gpay_account_got_suspended/ https://www.reddit.com/r/googlepay/comments/pmyog8/what_can_... Customer support is no help (of course). If Amazon did this it would be a different story, but google just takes craps on the users on their way to the bank - I can't imagine them having enough customer service focus to manage a bank type offering!

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

No worries, I’ll just use my Facebook bank account.

wetpaws 5y ago

I can't imagine anyone who in a sane mind will trust Google a single cent nowadays given their disastrous reputation both in term of product support and a customer experience.

notyourwork 5y ago

With their willingness to kill products, my bank account is far from ever to be something I would slap the G brand on.