The first project I worked on at Google was a system for consumers to send money to each other. My team made a mobile app before I joined, but it "wasn't part of the product vision" for that to be in the Google Wallet app. (So I guess we'll flush hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of code down the toilet!) Our PM looked around for teams willing to use our service, and found the Gmail team very receptive. A few engineers integrated it in about a week and we launched that "send money" button on Gmail at Google I/O. Could never get over how Gmail had "send money" but Google Wallet didn't. (They eventually changed their mind, of course.)
I'll never forget the launch. I was sick, and sitting on the floor of a war room live-coding a script to give every attendee $1. Python, had tests, and it persisted its state to SQLite so that we could Control-C it if our service got too slow. It didn't get too slow; we did a lot of load testing and capacity problems and the launch was very smooth. Most fun I've ever had while sick. (10-year-older jrockway wouldn't go to work while sick, though.)
>Our PM looked around for teams willing to use our service, and found the Gmail team very receptive. A few engineers integrated it in about a week and we launched that "send money" button on Gmail at Google I/O. Could never get over how Gmail had "send money" but Google Wallet didn't. (They eventually changed their mind, of course.)
Thanks for the insight on why Google makes so many braindead decisions. It's so frustrating I'm ready to abandon them entirely.
Haha, I'm still afraid to update GPay because I think they ruined it with their social or coupons or whatever the heck they did to it. All I want is to pay for stuff.
When I moved to the US I foolishly tried telling people to pay me, or I tried to pay them with GPay or GWallet or whatever it was, and they were like no? Everyone just uses Venmo now. Missed opportunity.
This is weird - I use it here in the UK and don't recognise this description at all. Social? Coupons? I just tap my phone to pay for stuff. It's the equivalent of Apple Pay, except that everyone's heard of Apple Pay and shops just conflate the two.
Europe (incl. the UK) doesn't need these social payment apps because we have free instant bank transfers between personal accounts. In the US if you want to send your friend money electronically then you need a 3rd party app.
Its two different products. Google pay especially in India is a mobile wallet with coupons and rewards. Ironically, the card payment app is now called Google Wallet.
I'll never forget the launch. I was sick, and sitting on the floor of a war room live-coding a script to give every attendee $1. Python, had tests, and it persisted its state to SQLite so that we could Control-C it if our service got too slow. It didn't get too slow; we did a lot of load testing and capacity problems and the launch was very smooth. Most fun I've ever had while sick. (10-year-older jrockway wouldn't go to work while sick, though.)