eBay and their own payment subsidiary, PayPal, did not greet Google’s most recent introduction, Google Wallet, with open arms. No sir, they instead followed up the launch by going straight to the courts – suing Google and a couple of executives for allegedly stealing trade secrets so that Google Wallet can be created. Google Wallet’s project lead Osama Bedier has been accused of feeding confidential PayPal information to Google so that it can develop the NFC mobile payment system, in addition to having former eBay executive Stephanie Tilenius not honor a contract by having her join Google as its VP of commerce in February 2010, which is a full month before she was actually done with a consulting contract with eBay. Bedier was also alleged to have participated in several attempts to poach PayPal employees while he was still at Google.
This legal complaint also directly accused Google of betraying a potential deal, where PayPal and Google were almost on the brink of agreeing on a deal which would have seen PayPal being used as a payment option in Android Market. Now that Google has their own Wallet service, it would make PayPal redundant.
eBay and PayPal says that “at the very point when the companies were negotiating and finalizing the Android-PayPal deal, Bedier was interviewing for a job at Google — without informing PayPal of this conflicting position.”
What do you think of the whole shebang? Does eBay and PayPal have a valid case here, or are they just trying to rain on Google’s parade?
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