Wall Street has suggested many things to Silicon Valley -- to give dividends, to break up part of their business or make other business decisions. Lately, another suggestion has been given, that Google should buy eBay.
Perhaps it can be blamed on investor-activist Carl Icahn who leads investors to make demands, but one analyst suggests that the Google-eBay merger will be "home run," according to MarketWatch.
“With Carl Icahn recasting public debate around the ownership of PayPal, and the integration of commerce and payments more broadly, we believe one potential ‘home run’ opportunity missing from the discourse is a combination of Google with eBay/PayPal,” Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a note to clients.
Google's weakness has been e-commerce and online payments, something that eBay already has with PayPal, he continued. “In commerce and payments, we believe that Google requires not only greater scale, but also the technology building blocks for an e-commerce marketplace to compete long-term with companies such as Amazon and Apple,” he wrote. “Together with eBay/PayPal, Google would be in a much stronger position to fend off well-capitalized competitors."
While it's a notable suggestion, .especially when faced with competition from China in the form of Alibaba, it's not clear if PayPal is the online payment that Google needs. With surcharges and complex payments for vendors, PayPal is far from a panacea. If shopping for a quality online payment source, Google should consider other, simpler alternatives that may not be on the market.
