Profile: Google Wallet
Michael Arrington
6 comments »
Company: Google (Wallet)
What is it?
This hasn’t launched yet, but there is some buzz around the blogosphere (and the Wall Street Journal) that Google is planning on launching a competing payment service to PayPal.
Is this Web 2.0? I think so. If its p2p, which I imagine it would be, then it certainly is.
From the WSJ article: “For Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., a payment service could represent a significant expansion beyond online advertising, which generated 99 percent of its $3.2 billion in revenue last year, the Journal said. Online-payment providers typically take a commission on each transaction.”
Google has a hill to climb - paypal has 72 million users (PayPal accounted for $233.1 million, or 23 percent, of eBay’s revenue during the first quarter). However, they’ve done this before with search (v. everyone), advertising (v. overture) and email, although not with a social network (see orkut - when’s the last time you logged in?)
Gary Price noted that the company “Google Payment Corporation” was created by Google a couple of months ago: “I did a bit of research (love that deep web (-:) after reading the article and discovered that two months ago Google filed the paperwork with the California Secretary of State and formed the Google Payment Corporation. Interesting.” Gary also noted that someone registered “googlewallet.com“.
More on this as it develops.
Relevant Links:
Battelle on Google Wallet
SocialPatterns on Google Wallet
SearchEngineWatch on Google Wallet
AP story on this
Business 2.0 blog post on this
Delicious Tag: GoogleWallet
Technorati Tag: GoogleWallet
WSJ Article
StellarBay on this
USA Today on this
Seattle Times on this
Hitchiker’s Guide to 650 on this
SiliconBeat on Google Wallet
Charlene Li on Google Wallet
Tech Beat on Google Wallet
Meg Whitman on Google Wallet
Infectious Greed on this “it is seismic stuff”
GMSV on Google Wallet (saying the service will not be p2p, which really questions whether it should be on TechCrunch as a Web 2.0 play :-))
Tags: paypal, googlewallet, web2.0, techcrunch, onlinepayments, google
I think the WSJ may have overstated the ambitions of Google Wallet project (and then the other media jumped onboard their speculation) as the Google CEO came out the next day and said that they are not pursuing anything in the space that PayPal dominates.
I’ve always found that PayPal works great for person-to-person payments, for subcription payments and receipts, and for buying from companies that sell though other sites, like eBay. I’ve never had a problem with it and I’ve been using it for a lot of years.
I don’t really see a need for a separate wallet program — and I’ve tried several of them over the years, including MSN Wallet and eWallet. I mostly just tried those to take advantage of lucrative trial offers. I’ve used a password and form-filling identity utility to store my information locally for years and I use PayPal frequently to make my other payments.
I agree that it looks like Google Wallet won’t be p2p, which makes it much less interesting for us at TechCrunch.
I’ve had an up and down relationship with PayPal. No need to go into it here, but they need to increase their customer service levels, at least for “merchant” customers.
Many people said that the Google wallet was coming out today.
We are still yet to see Google Wallet - is it really going to happen? Can they really compete with paypal - who knows.