Google Checkout is Here!

http://checkout.google.com

That's right! The service that's been rumored for months (if not years) has finally arrived. Just announced hours ago, the Google Checkout service promises to seriously streamline online purchasing.

Here's a good article on it, detailing how it all works. You can also read about it on the Google Blog. But let me hit a few of the important points:


For those of you who don't like giving your credit card information out to dozens of companies, the Google Checkout will allow you to only enter it once. Google securely handles everything else. So all you need to do is go to one of the more than 100 stores that accept Google Checkout and click the Google Checkout button, and you're done!

You enter your credit card information with Google and they hold it securely and you never have to enter a credit card number on a merchant's website again.

This has the potential to seriously infringe on PayPal's territory. PayPal definitely already has an advantage with over 100 million registered users, but Google has major brand recognition and it's easier to set up a Checkout account than a PayPal account. The coming months are going to be very interesting.

Read more at Google News.

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