Posted by Nay Aung, Checkout team The situation in Myanmar )Burma( continues to deteriorate in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. It is estimated that more than 22,000 lives have perished and 41,000 people are missing. One million people are left without shelter, electricity, and clean water. Some reports suggest that the death toll could rise even higher if help does not arrive in a timely manner. As a Googler and a citizen of Myanmar,

Posted by Alyssa England, Associate Product Marketing Manager Checkout is just one of the Google ecommerce solutions available to merchants. Take a look at the Google Base blog to learn how Zappos.com succeeded in increasing conversions and lowering costs by adding their products to Google Product Search for free.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager A few months ago, we released a reporting feature that enabled you to easily review and download previous orders. Initially accessible only from the seller interface, this feature is now also available to API users. With the Order Report API , you can download a list of Google Checkout orders into a comma-separated file. The API will return a list of orders for a period of up to 31 days,

Posted by David Wurtz, Product Manager Many of you are aware of Google Trends , the handy tool that enables you to track and compare what Google users are searching for. Now imagine a similar tool that can give you some insight into what people are buying and selling online. That's exactly what we've built: Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds. )Of course, all the data is anonymized first.

Posted by Lisa August-Schmidt, Google Checkout Operations When it comes to improvements for Checkout, you know best which features will make a difference to your business. In the past, we've followed your discussions in the developers forum and have noted your email requests too. Now we've built a Feature Request Form that will let you vote for the three new elements you'd be most interested in having.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager Since launching Google Checkout for Non-Profits a few months ago, we've gotten a lot of email from people wanting to know where they can use Checkout to make donations. The volume of email has only increased as we've moved further into the holiday season, so we thought we'd launch a holiday page that highlights some of the organizations you can support using Checkout. The holiday season is a wonderful time to give,

Posted by Gavin Chan, Product Marketing Manager As you merchants out there may know, we originally planned to transition back to Checkout's standard fee structure on January 1. Considering how busy this time of the year is for you, we're extending our free transaction processing offer an extra month - to February 1, 2008. After that, you'll still be able to earn free credit card processing by using AdWords , Google's performance-based advertising program.

Posted by Gavin Chan, Product Marketing Manager When thinking about ways to help people use both Google Product Search and Google Checkout to do their holiday shopping this year, a few of us from these teams decided to have a little fun. The result is a short video featuring our very own Kristin and Brian in their holiday finery. So if this video inspires you to shop, make sure to visit our holiday special offers page . And happy holidays to you.

Posted by Reid Townsend, Technical Account Manager Some things are simply better together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Or, say, Google Checkout and mobile devices. We launched Google Checkout for mobile back in May, and we're excited to announce a new way to make products available to the legions of mobile users. Cardinal Commerce has integrated Google Checkout for mobile into their MAX platform . SkyMall, RitzCamera, Dazadi,

Posted by Shoaib Makani, Product Marketing Manager Don't let the holiday shopping grinch put the squeeze on your time or budget. With Google Checkout you can shop more quickly with one login across the web and stay organized with all your Checkout orders tracked in one place. And to help you save on those holiday purchases,

Posted by David Wurtz, Product Manager We're always busy adding new features to improve the Checkout experience for our merchants, and many of these new features have found a home under the "Settings" tab. But to alleviate some of the congestion under that tab, we recently launched a shiny new "Tools" tab. Here, you'll find all the tools you've )hopefully( grown to love. These include: Buy Now Buttons Email Invoices Coupons Integration Console .

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager One of the great things about working at Google is the opportunity to contribute to the company's support of the non-profit community. Google works with non-profits in a number of different ways, ranging from helping them increase their visibility and drive traffic to their sites through the Google Grants program, to providing them with special versions of products like Google Apps , Google Earth ,

Posted by Stephanie Bilodeau, Strategic Partner Manager The Google Checkout team welcomes TigerDirect , a 20-year-old business that currently ranks as the #24 top retailer in Internet Retailer's 2007 Top 500 guide . TigerDirect offers digital and electronic equipment, ranging from large-ticket items such as desktop computers and laptops to smaller-scale purchases like digital cameras and PC components and accessories. In fact, you can find more than 25,

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Site Search Team If you're a Google Checkout merchant, you're probably interested in learning about other Google products that can help you run your website and increase sales. In particular, your website needs its own search engine so that visitors can find products that interest them; Google offers a number of solutions for this. Thousands of businesses use our hosted search and appliance solutions,

Posted by Anita Barci, Product Marketing Manager, Google Checkout Team Having second thoughts about that sweater you just ordered? Maybe you want to get a different size, or accidentally entered the wrong shipping address? Now with Google Checkout you can quickly and easily cancel an order if you want to. Just navigate to the Order Receipt and click the "Cancel" button at the top of the page.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager Today we launched an "Advanced Settings" section in the "Integration" tab under settings. This section lets Level 2 integrated merchants opt in to take advantage of new features without affecting any other part of their Checkout integration. Right now there are five specific features that merchants can opt in to use: * Name Parsing : Provides the first name, last name,

Posted by Don Faul, Manager, Google Checkout Operations On Monday, October 22, at 9:00 pm PDT )Tuesday, October 23, at 5:00 am BST for merchants in the UK(, Google Checkout will be unavailable for approximately 30-90 minutes as we conduct server maintenance. During this time, the Google Checkout button will not appear on merchant websites, and merchants will be unable to process orders or log in to their Google Checkout account.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager We pay close attention to the feedback we get from merchants in discussion boards, blogs, and email, and we are always working to improve Checkout in response. The most recent example: today we launched a new report so you can easily review and download your previous orders. Go to your Merchant Center inbox and find the "Download data to spreadsheet ).

Posted by Alyssa England, Product Marketing Manager Today is Blog Action Day . Thousands of blogs worldwide are posting news about how individuals and organizations are helping the environment in all kinds of ways. We thought this would be a great time to let you know about some of the ways in which Google Checkout is playing a role in the important work that many of these organizations do.

Posted by Robert Swerling, Head of Strategic Partnerships, U.K. Checkout As summer weddings give way to the holiday shopping season, we're excited to let you know that two more great retailers are offering Google Checkout services in the U.K. Are you interested in buying something dazzling for your loved one, like a piece of jewelry? You can now shop at Goldsmiths , which opened its first store in Newcastle in 1778 and is Britain's largest jeweler today,