According to a story posted on bloomberg.com, Google is getting ready to test a mobile-payment system.It's way overdue for any American firm to do this in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Asians and Europeans I speak with are astonished that the United States lacks even a rudimentary mobile-payment system. Consumers in the rest of the developed world use their cell phones to pay for many things, from soft drinks to mass transportation. The delay in the States has often been blamed on the major telephone companies, which just hadn't quite figured out how to make a zillion dollars on the deal and screw their competitors at the same time.
Whether Google is the most desirable firm to launch this commercial activity is debatable. Its dominance in search is troubling enough for those who do not believe that bigger is necessarily better. The combination of a dominant mobile-payment system and a near-monopoly on online search represents a financial bonanza. Once entrenched, Google would be as formidable as Standard Oil was in the 19th Century.
At least Google is forcing the issue. It's about time someone did.
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