Ever since news about Google’s upcoming payment service broke, there have been many who have speculated about the different uses and purposes of the “Google Wallet”.
When it was first revealed, many thought the Google Wallet would be a direct challenge to eBay’s PayPal service, This line of thinking was succinctly denied by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. Yesterday, Charlene Li discussed how G-Money could be used to consolidate micropayments, which does present itself as a viable option, especially when you consider Charlene’s scenario.
Today, however, an open letter originating from the SugarBank.com blog provided another use for the upcoming Google Wallet: embracing adult content-related purchase transactions.
With eBay not allowing PayPal to be used for these types of transactions, adult-related web businesses are forced to use expensive merchant services that can leave many, buyers and sellers alike, unsatisfied. For instance, many merchant companies are unequipped to handle “high risk” transactions. Because of these difficulties, the author of the open letter, Sam Sugar, feels Google’s payment program would be perfect for the Internet adult industry.
Sugar’s rationale comes from the support he feels Google already provides adult businesses. According to the letter:
Google is porn friendly. You provide tools to allow people to view adult images in their search results, there appear to be no restrictions on the type of products that can be found via Froogle, and a great number of the blogs you host (at blogger.com) contain adult material.
This is quite true. Google users are responsible for filtering adult-related content out of the query resultsand they do not allow adult sites to display AdSense ads, but this seems to be out of respect for their big-name advertisers who don’t want to be associated with such content.
Sugar’s open letter also contains a number of conclusions demonstrating why embracing the adult industry with their new payment system would benefit Google financially and otherwise:
Conclusion: Google is already in the porn business and it would be damaging to withdraw.
Conclusion: PayPal have banned high-risk’ transactions due to a lack of technical expertise. Google can satisfy a waiting billion dollar market by catering to adult transactions.
Conclusion: Though handling adult transactions is complicated, publishing adult material – which Google already does in it’s cache and via blogger.com – is more so.
Conclusion: Taking adult transactions will give Google the adult edge’ that VHS used to overtake Betamax. PayPal’s neglect is Google’s opportunity.
Conclusion: Adult transactions are already being managed profitably and efficiently by a number of small companies. Google has the resources and the brainpower to handle adult transactions safely if it chooses to.
While it remains to be seen whether or not Google will heed Sugar’s advice, the fact remains he does provide legitimate and sound reasoning to his suggestion. Monetarily speaking, if Google was to embrace the adult industry with its Google Wallet, the financial rewards would probably be quite extensive.
When considering Sugar’s “pitch,” a question remains: would Google risk taking such a PR beating in order to pad their coffers some more?
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
