Google takes on payment processing

Analysts are billing it as a "paypal killer" but I think that's off the mark.

Being me, I have to search for an apt analogy: if this is a PayPal killer, then mammals were a coelecanth killer. Which is to say: I think Google has a bigger target in mind than Paypal, which is a small piece of the pie (which everyone hates anyhow). Instead they're taking on the banks, First Data, and (since the acquisition of Verus) Sage.

Let's see, add together Google Base, Google "office" (gmail, spreadsheets, etc), and now Google Checkout? That's starting to look like an ERP or NetSuite-type solution pretty fast.

And now, a cautionary tale:

In 1974, IBM created SNA (the Systems Network Architecture). They built something with the ultimate depth of (mainframe) functionality in preparation for the explosion they saw coming in computer networks. I picture the Big Bluers sitting around a conference table in Poughkeepsie, chainsmoking Pall Malls and saying, "by gilly, someday there could be as many as a thousand machines networked together! We must make sure we defend IBM's mainframe market share in that environment!"

SNA has disappeared from view. Sure, there must be a couple of SNA networks out there... coelecanths. TCP/IP and other smaller, more flexible network stacks were what carried us to where we are today. I once read that OSI (another dead network protocol stack) was a "mammal designed by a saurian committee."

When the climate changes species either mutate or become an evolutionary niche player. Reproduction doesn't cut it anymore.