John Battelle points to a Forbes piece (from Friday) anticipating the release of Google Payments or "GBuy." The analysis is that this threatens PayPal's expansion. Wait and see, but probably. Battelle says that Googlephobia may limit adoption and growth. That's unclear to me until we see how easy and effective the offering is.
One commenter on Battelle's blog points out that a version of this system is already in place on Google Video. And if you have a credit card number stored with Google that process is very fast and simple (essentially just: 1) sign in and 2) confirm your intent to purchase).
PayPal claims that it has more than 100 million accounts. And PayPal should get a boost from the eBay-Yahoo! alliance, which will heavily feature the payments system across its network.
More from Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal and The Mercury News.
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Related: Barry Schwartz briefly writes up the fact that eBay is launching an AdSense competitor, AdContext, which will reportedly pay not on a click basis but on a commission basis, as a percentage of the value of a sale. More from Reuters (via USAToday).
The ads will be not unlike what's going on in the right column at Kaboodle with the new MyCollectibles partnership with eBay.
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