eBay says no way to Google Checkout

Bang bang, eBay has - rather unsurprisingly - shot down Google Checkout, preventing people from using it to pay for auction items, according to a post on AuctionBytes.

eBay, which owns rival payment processor PayPal, has this week tweaked its Safe Payments policy to blacklist Google Checkout as a payment option. It also changed the name of the policy, which is now called 'Accepted Payments', presumably to avoid filing Google's new service under the term 'unsafe'.

AuctionBytes points to a small snippet from eBay's policy, which states that payment processors must have a "substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services". Google Checkout is still so new that it hasn't yet made it to the UK, where eBay's Accepted Payments policy remains so far unchanged.

Google Checkout was touted as a possible "PayPal killer" before it launched yet CEO Eric Schmidt went out of his way to distance Google Checkout from PayPal. It comes as no surprise to see Checkout banned, joining a list of about 40 other payment services, including big names like Neteller, although whether eBay's users will like this as much as executives is doubtful.

AuctionBytes quotes a Google spokesperson as saying: "Google Checkout is not a beta product. Google has a long history in billing and payments for AdWords and for premium services, such as Google Video."

Too bad for Google. I wonder whether this is linked to eBay's newly-snug relationship with Yahoo? Maybe we'll see a rapid Google Base-led counterattack from Big G.

Has anybody bought the Gbay.com domain yet?

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