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Wonder why Google needs to contact your buyers for confirmation? I thought they are the middle man should be transparent in the purchase process.

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Rather wondering why google is allowed to do that ... As you said, they're just the payment processor, you shouldn't be obligated to show them proof that the goods you were paid for were actually delivered

Well, the hard part about paypal and probably google checkout isn't processing payments, it's managing fraud - see Max Levchin's interview in the (very good, imho) "Founders at Work" book.

So I'm not surprised google has to do potentally damaging things to somehow make it all work.

The strange part to me is that they don't require and automate this buyer contact info & tracking number gathering from the start.

This is all part of anti-money laundering provisions introduced in the past few years. As the carrier they are obligated and liable.

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