From a recent Wall Street Journal article:
Google
Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could
help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may heighten
competition with eBay Inc.’s PayPal unit, according to people familiar with the matter.
This news comes on the heels of my recent micropayments article last week.
There’s been a lot of speculation for awhile that one of Google’s many goals is to create a global system of accessible information where people and organizations create revenues based on the content they create by having users access said content for a small fee. This evolution is commonly referred to as EPIC.
Think journalists getting paid for their work by readers directly as opposed to being employed by a newspaper.
For Google to create such a system – essentially the backbone for a Google interactive global marketplace – it’s in their best interest to create an easy way for money to exchange hands.
Therefore, I look at this news as just one more step in Google’s ongoing march toward world domination (queue Dr. Evil laugh). Kidding aside, the completed puzzle should be quite mind blowing.
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June 19th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
many people have tried & failed to compete with paypal, including ebay itself (with billpoint, before admitting defeat & buying paypal for $1.5B in 2002), as well as Yahoo (paydirect) and c2it (citibank). numerous other startups too, many of which were killed by fraud costs & funky business models.
that said, one of the few companies that could mount a realistic challenge is google (amazon is another). still, even with their brand & distribution it’s not a slam dunk. but they’ve got a shot, and if nothing else they could reduce costs & hassle with all their existing adwords customers & adsense affiliates.
one other startup to keep an eye on: http://www.xoom.com was started by a few friends of paypal founders, and includes more than a few paypal alumni on its team.
(full disclosure: i used to work for paypal from 2001-2004)
- dave mcclure
http://www.simplyhired.com