Technology Watch - Google Checkout

This holiday season, you would have noticed at websites, the offer of $10 off if one paid for the merchandise using 'Google Checkout'.

I was curious about it and clicked that extra link to know more about the service. Google is trying to make inroads into the web payment business.

Using 'Google Checkout', the customer pays the merchant through Google. Google stores the transaction information, the credit card details and forwards money to the vendor.

Advantages:
* One account for all the monetary transactions
* No more reliance on the vendor to keep the credit card details safely (we can surely assume that Google will do a better job of keeping the details safe)

Disadvantages:
* One more level of invasion of privacy by google. Google will now be able to keep tab on what one buys apart from all the information it already knows about us.
* Further helps Google to become one big company which wants to control everything

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