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The Saga of the Virtual Wallet
theodp writes "Fourteen years ago, Microsoft Wallet promised 'secure, convenient purchasing on the Internet.' That was then, this is now. TechCrunch reports that the first commercial for Google Wallet has been unveiled, and it stars Seinfeld's George Costanza and his overstuffed, exploding wallet. At launch (TBD), Google Wallet will allow you to use a Google Nexus S 4G (from Sprint) to tap-to-pay using Citi MasterCard cards or the Google Prepaid Card. Not to be outdone, PayPal offered a video sneak peek of its upcoming virtual wallet offering, which is promised to be more than 'just shoving a credit card on a phone.' In May, PayPal sued Google over electronic wallet technology, alleging that the search giant hired two of its former execs to obtain trade secrets for a mobile transactions project."
Fourteen years ago, Microsoft wholesale copied an existing competitor's product to announce Microsoft Wallet. That competitor was CyberCash, which was the first to provide a secure payment system on the Internet. I remember watching a Microsoft promotional video where actually showed pages from CyberCash's web site and presented them as their own, being careful to scroll down enough before the cameras rolled to cut off the CyberCash banners. I learned an important lesson about Microsoft that day.
What sort of trade secrets are involved in transferring currency from person A to person B?
Usually a lot of "dazzle them with BS" snake-oil crypto this is carefully designed to be completely wide open to cops and advertisers.
The only thing holding this back is the chicken and egg problem of deploying a standard that is widely adopted
Standardization probs, and that tiny little problem of a reason why. Its not the kind of thing that anyone desires. There are some wanna-be middlemen who are hoping to intermediate themselves, everyone else is like "who cares". Whats in it for me is ... um... uh... nothing, and whats in it for wanna-be intermediaries is make money fast.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yeah, because it is sooooo much more difficult to take out a card and swipe it than it is to take my phone out of its case, unlock it, find and launch the app, and then "tap" it on some reader thing.
Just what I want to do after giving Google access to my contacts, my phone calls, my applications, my location, and all my searching.... give them access to my purchasing and purchasing records.
No thanks.
And no, I don't have a Google checkout account (one reason I use Amazon App Market) and don't use Gmail (I have a Gmail account ONLY because it is mandated for Android, I don't actually use it), and don't use Google talk or chat or Picasa or Plus. For all of these, I intentionally use different services/carriers.
I am amazed that most people see no danger in turning over more and more and more and more personal information to a single, giant company. Especially one that makes all its money not on we as "customers" but from other companies. And one that doesn't even have a way to contact a human when something goes horribly wrong.
Last I checked, issuing currency to enable commerce was a responsibility of the government. The US government has been utterly failing to create electronic currency for about 30 years now, preferring to let insurance companies and usurers create a ridiculously insecure, non-interoperable systems, all the while dragging down the economy with transaction fees, so they can get campaign contributions from them.
This is the responsibility of the government. Give us electronic currency already!
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.