'Google Purchases' Makes Appearance

Adding further credence to rumors that Google is planning to launch its own PayPal-like online payments service, industry watchers this week uncovered a new page on the search giant's site called "Google Purchases." In addition, Google updated its robots.txt file to tell Web crawlers to exclude the directories /gwt and /purchases.

In June, speculation abound that Google was on the cusp of launching a service called Google Wallet. On April 13, Google registered a new entity in California called Google Payment Corp, further fueling the rumor mill.

Although the offering could be expanded to handle third party transactions, Google Wallet was expected to first integrate with the company's existing payments for advertising on its searches.

Google Wallet could also process payments for the company's new Google Video service, which will allow users to purchase and download video clips offered by individuals, and for customers of Google Earth.

A screenshot of the Google Purchases page posted by GoogleRumors shows that a Google Account holder would be able to add credit card information to "get started with Google." And a message near the bottom reads, "'Google' will appear next to the charge on your credit card statement."

The portion of the registration page that included the credit card option has since disappeared, but at least two Web logs now carry images of the registration page itself.

"They are still at work over at the GooglePlex," GoogleRumors wrote.