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eBay’s Payment Policies Spark Two Antitrust Lawsuits: “Two antitrust lawsuits were filed against eBay in April 2007 and have been assigned to the same judge because they are related, according to court filings. The plaintiffs in both parties have complained of eBay’s practices with regard to its online payment service PayPal. The same judge had presided over a PayPal-related class-action lawsuit that was filed in 2002.”

I recently stated on last blog post that eBay would never allow Google Checkout on their platform. But it sounds like some lawsuits are in the works that could potentially force eBay to “level the playing field” by including Google Checkout. If eBay quickly implements support for other payment gateways like AuthorizeNet, VeriSign, LinkPoint — they would have a legitimate argument that Google Checkout’s technology has been around as long.

Barney Stone, owner of Stone Edge Order Manager had this to say about Google Checkout:

http://www.stoneedge.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4848

Google Checkout uses technology (multiple asynchronous data transfers per transaction with potentially long delays) that is not compatible with a desktop based application like the Order Manager. They asked us to support it, but we told them we could not until they switch to a reasonable technology like that used by all of the other gateways we support.

While the asynchronous argument is sound for a desktop based program, Google Checkout and eBay could talk nice to each since they are both web platforms. It takes eBay a while to receive paid notifications from Paypal. It wouldn’t be so different with Google Checkout. If Google search results can appear in sub-seconds, why can’t transaction be approved just as quick?

Is there something I am missing?

Let me know!