eBay and PayPal Sue Google over Mobile Payments Trade Secrets

Hi,
As the world moves from paper currency, credit cards and debit cards to a virtual payment system based on mobile phones and handheld devices, the major companies driving the revolution are going to clash. In the latest example of this, eBay and its wholly-owned payment processing system, PayPal, have filed suit against Google, claiming that two of its new executives brought and illegally shared trade secrets that were obtained during and after their previous employment with PayPal.

The fine details of the suit have yet to emerge, but the primary complaint is based on the fact that two of PayPal's former high-level employees are now working for Google and helped the company develop and launch its new Google Wallet service, which was unveiled today. eBay claims that there was information transferred to Google while one of the executives still worked for PayPal and that the same former employee attempted to recruit other staffers at PayPal to join Google, which is a violation of the original employment contract.

Until very recently, PayPal and Google had been working together to establish a deal in which PayPal would be the payment processing system for Google's Android operating system for mobile phones. Now that Google Wallet has been officially unveiled, its clear that Google and PayPal will probably not be working together - now or in the future. As we move more toward a world where currency is no longer something that you hold in your hands, significant changes will come to the way in which we live, work and consume. Wealth and financial worth may become even more abstract notions than they are today.