Some way down a free Wall Street Journal article mainly about Jeff Jordan, boss of PayPal, it says:
But PayPal must now contend with Google. The Mountain View, Calif., Web-search giant, which has terrified Silicon Valley with its ability to quickly create new consumer products and services, is developing a rival service called GBuy. For the last nine months, Google has recruited online retailers to test GBuy, according to one person briefed on the service. GBuy will feature an icon posted alongside the paid-search ads of merchants, which Google hopes will tempt consumers to click on the ads, says this person. GBuy will also let consumers store their credit-card information on Google.
PayPal is now owned by eBay, and the story says "PayPal generated 23% of eBay's total $1.3 billion quarterly revenue" in the last quarter. I can believe it. PayPal is far from cheap, and only pressure from eBay stops many sellers from charging PayPal users a premium to cover the cost.
This is one area where a cut-price Google-backed system could get a warm welcome. However, it's also an area where extreme reliability is needed. Having uninstalled Google's bloated Desktop Sidebar and the flaky Toolbar 4 beta -- and looked at Google Base, the bodged Google Pack and the awful Google Video -- I have diminishing faith in Google's ability to deliver software that is intelligently designed and works reliably.
