Google’s actions as the middleman between advertisers and publishers have yielded a fresh batch of Wallet rumors.
Google registered Google Payments as a corporation in April, according to the GoogleRumors web site. Many have speculated that the Wallet will be the next PayPal, giving merchants appearing in Froogle and AdSense buyers a payment system owned by Google.
For Froogle, that would make an uploaded catalog an instant ecommerce site, able to take payments. Users who do price comparisons via Froogle could take the next step and purchase an item they find there, instantly.
The next question would be how to handle a shopping cart and shipping options; Google doesn’t seem like it would want the hassle of dealing with cart software like Yahoo does. They would certainly like to take a transaction fee for each purchase going through the Wallet, though.
Ad buyers in the AdSense and AdWords programs would deposit funds to a Wallet account, and have their buys debit it. As a merchant, controlling the payment process instead of using a third-party would save it millions in revenue it would normally pay for processing that transaction.
It’s fun to speculate on topics like this, and what Google plans with its next stock sale. The Wall Street Journal probably found the best answer for the latter, by conjecturing the powers behind the Google throne want to bring its market valuation down to a level more representative of the business.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
