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Just An Online Minute... GBuy's Official Launch

Google is poised this week to launch an online electronic payment service similar to eBay's PayPal, according to a report in today's Wall Street Journal.

Rumors of the service, GBuy, have surfaced before, but today's report includes new details about pricing and integration with Google's core search business.

The product reportedly will work in conjunction with AdWords, so that consumers who visit a merchant's site after doing a Google search will have the option of going to a separate, GBuy checkout site. Google plans to charge merchants a 2.2 percent commission, in addition to a fee of 30 cents per transaction--but will also offer a discount to AdWords advertisers.

GBuy, an obvious challenge to eBay, is expected to come just several weeks after Google took on Microsoft in the software realm with a Web-based spreadsheet application.

These moves by Google, combined with its clear lead in search (currently, the company accounts for about half of all searches), have eBay, MSN and Yahoo fighting to keep up.

So far, eBay and Yahoo recently struck a deal calling for Yahoo ads on eBay and PayPal on Yahoo, but it's not at all clear that an eBay/Yahoo combination will be enough to challenge Google.

Will a Yahoo-MSN merger be next? It's not at all clear whether Yahoo--a longstanding independent company--will want to join the Microsoft empire, but predictions of such a deal will surely increase once Google has officially launched GBuy.

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