Waiting for GBuy

After searching for DVDs on eBay a few hours ago, I was again reminded of Paypal’s continuous refusal to offer its services to Philippine residents. When Bidpay closed, I was disappointed for I could no longer buy most of the items I want on eBay.

So last night I again searched Google for news on the rumored introduction of its own payment processor. Guess what I found out!

I was so thrilled when I saw Indiatimes.com’s “Gbuy may steal ebay’s show”. The report quoted Alan Eustace, Google’s Senior Vice President for Engineering and Research, as saying they “developed something for internal use, and that they “wanted to enable people to sell using Google Earth, without the user going through multiple websites and handing their credit card numbers…”

I also found a News.com report (which cited a Wall Street Journal article) that said Google began recruiting online sellers last year to test GBuy.

Barry Schwartz, executive editor of the Search Engine Roundtable, gave readers a sneak peek of Gbuy–or whatever it would be called–in his article “Buying and Accepting Payments at Google Base.”

The News.com report said Gbuy operates independently from Google Base–a site where users may submit all types of online and offline content that Google would host and make searchable online. But Eustace said that they developed it for “internal use.” It’s either “internal use” meant integration with Google Account–Google users only need one set of username or e-mail address and password to access various services such as GMail, GTalk, and Google Analytics–or Google decided to expand the use of Gbuy outside of Google Base.

Whichever was the case, I hope Gbuy would be open to all soon. This would make Filipinos rejected by Paypal–such as myself–really happy.