EXCLUSIVE - oh my stars!

Ok folks, we've been learning more and more about the Google Base / wallet reputation system.  Last week it was a rumor from Dirson with no screen shots/backup.  Yesterday we found the link that talks about "See my seller ratings".

Today we have uncovered the actually rating screen within google purchases:

Here are the highlights of what we find here:

• Rate a seller - so purchases.google.com/rate?t=X where X is the transaction number will be the mechanism used to leave a rating.
• Sample comments - on the right this shows some examples they want you to follow.
• Stars - the five star system which will give you an indication of how they stack up against other sellers.  Note that pricegrabber employs a similar star system (shopping has checks, bizrate/shopzilla smileys). When you move the mouse over the stars you see the five options you have (all AJAX-ified so you don't have to click and refresh).  Here are the rating options:

1. One star - poor.  I'd discourage others from this seller.
2. Two stars - below average
3. Three stars - average
4. Four stars - above average
5. Five stars - excellent, I'd definitely buy from this seller again.

If the rating is below average (one or two stars), a REMEDY link appears.

There are also five pages in the help system now about reviews, I've got screenshots linked here if you want to see them:

• Main page - four topics:
• page 1 - How do I create and publish a review?  Of note: You can't change a review once published.  A nice thing is they aren't limited by some arbitrary character limit.  That makes the content more useful than say an eBay where you have 100 characters or something like that.  IF the seller posts a reply to your feedback, you can reply to the reply.
• page 2 - What happens after I publish my review?  Of note: For the time being -only the buyer and seller can see the review?  This must be a beta thing.  Reviews are averaged.
• page 3 - How do I change or update reviews I've published?  Of note: reviews are permanent, but you can respond to a response.
• page 4 - What if a seller disagrees with a buyer's review? Of note: as mentioned above - it goes buyer review, seller respond, buyer respond to statement.

I did all this in screenshots as things are definitely in flux and it looks like they are hot rolling this stuff daily right now.

Ok, so there you have it - I think we've discovered most of what the google account purchases (gpay/gwallet) system looks like.  It's cool, but not earth shattering, except for one important aspect that I want to cover later with some more thought.   

Comments

[Helen, ecommerce manager]

As for me I prefer star rating and never read comments. And there is one point I would like to add to the review: the one where they tell you what other product were bought by the people who bought that one. I think that's insane cause very often the goods are not complements.

[Nice]

Hope they become an alternative to PayPal, I'm tired of PayPal charging too much.

[Bill Washburn]

Scot,
It seems to me that this stellar development, so to speak, by Google Base could prove to be a watershed moment. That is, perhaps Google Base and eBay will take a moment to notice that the real opportunity here is for the two behemoths to cooperate and interoperate on the reputation battle field. We still face an ecommerce realm that is risky enough, threatening enough, painful enough, etc. that a very substantial proportion of Internet users simply refuse to participate at all in the online marketplace. I think that is the real challenge facing eBay, Google, Amazon, MSN, etc. at this stage of things. The biggest opportunity Google's move into ecommerce is not to eat eBay's lunch, it's to grow the ecommerce sector. The true opportunity is to compete and cooperate simultaneously, just as ISPs do. Their chance is to make reputation more useful, more visible, more portable, interoperable and still maintain the veracity of the reputation data. As part of the Opinity team I really hope it's time the Internet's philosophical DNA of interoperability for all end users everywhere can start to apply to the ecommerce space.