Paypal is commanding force in the payments and online finance space.
They manage over 123 million accounts in 53 countries. And being owned by eBay doesn't exactly hurt.
But Google Checkout is a burgeoning force to be reckoned with. Google has a marketing platform that is unmatched in the form of its search engine traffic and they've got deep pockets to go get users with (see the $10 offer to new users on their home page).
I'm sure that Paypal will fight back and Google Checkout hasn't yet had to reckon with the same huge spam issues as Paypal. But I wouldn't bet against the search giant.
A good analysis, but remember that not everything Google touches turns to gold. For example, their shopping search engine - Froogle - never really took off. And they had to buy YouTube because it was too far ahead of GoogleVideo in market share. Perhaps the same is true of PayPal.
Posted by: Michael Heraghty | February 2, 2007 4:58 AM | Permalink to Comment