(Column) – Google enthusiasts recently uncovered a webpage indicating that Google was testing (sans public beta) a new payment method, and preliminary speculations suggest that Google is planning to take PayPal head on.

Yes, it most definitely looks like it, but that’s just the surface and scratching it a little reveals the bigger picture. If you look at every Google product, you will realize one common theme – they all help you look for something (search) and this means that simply introducing a payment gateway in no way completes that picture. Google will most likely find a way to integrate search into its payment method, and this obvious extension has fairly serious albeit interesting complications.

Picture this, Google gets the payment gateway up and running, but what does it do with it? Well, it integrates it with its online shopping service called Froogle. Since eBay is already in deep trouble, it poses no threat to Google either way. Google then proceeds to make its controversial indexed book library paid through this and suddenly, Amazon’s sales figures will take a hit simply because Google knows the web, can pull out the best deals and products for you, even the most obscure of products will be right there, neatly indexed inside Google’s servers.

A further extension could be that you simply search on Google and it lets you select the product and make a payment through its toolbar. Hey, since we are at it, you could probably purchase products through its Desktop Search sidebar where you can add a plug-in for browsing latest shopping categories.

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It could also act as a money transfer service, and it would be only too convenient to look up vendor locations on Google Maps or Google Earth for that matter.

Speaking of which, the official statement from the company says that the interface was for a new payment system it’s devising for customers shifting to the paid version of Google Earth. Well, you know what they say, today Google Earth, tomorrow the web.

Other websites would link with Google, which would give it an unmatched product inventory where it could search for the best deals for its surfers. Further integration could also let you shop simply by clicking on an ad generated via Google Adsense. This could be further extended into adding free payment gateways to websites that are running Adsense but don’t have a payment gateway of their own. This would give Google even further reach and on the Internet, reach is the ultimate power.

The possibilities don’t stop there and I’m sure there are lots of other possibilities that I haven’t thought off, but more importantly, it would again raise the same privacy concerns as before. Are we comfortable giving all our personal information to a single entity? Sure it gathers it anyway but why go right ahead and feed it? I may have been bitten by the paranoia bug but I don’t want my credit card and other personal details to be neatly indexed, put away and be available to anyone with a single click.

All this is speculation, of course, and there isn’t much more we can do right now, but one thing is certain. If Google enters this territory, it will not rest until it has beaten every player in the game. It’ll then dominate the likes of Microsoft, but whether or not this happens or when it happens only time will tell. But if it happens, Google’s omniscience will increase manifold and I’m not sure if that is something to be particularly excited about.