Google service could compete with PayPal

Google has begun offering a new payment option for a handful of people who had listed items for sale on the Google Base posting service, a step that could eventually put it in direct competition with eBay and PayPal, reports the Mercury News.

The "Google account`" allows merchants to easily accept payment for creative works ranging from poems to recipes, as well as e-commerce mainstays such as books or collectibles.

In its final form, analysts believe the service could become an alternative to eBay`s payment service PayPal. But Tom Oliveri, product marketing manager for Google Base, says the payment service was not intended to compete with eBay or PayPal. Google officials declined to speculate on how the service might develop in the future.

Issues with mass production of Blu-Ray drives could be to blame if the PlayStation 3 (PS3) launch is pushed back to the third quarter, reports Game Spot.

Japanese site Sankei Web is reporting that Sony has acknowledged the possibility of a delay in the system, and that such a delay would be due to problems with the mass production of the console`s built-in Blu-Ray drive.

If Sony does delay the system, it would put the launch off until after October in order to hit the busy holiday season.

Vodafone expects to reduce the value of its assets by between lb23 billion and lb28 billion, it said, as it nears completion of its budget for next year, reports The Register.

This, it said, was "against a backdrop of intensifying competition and pricing pressures in several of its key markets".

The company expects mobile revenue growth will be slower than expected - in the range of 5% to 6.5% - thanks to increasing competition and regulatory reductions in termination rates.

More than 60 years after the end of World War II, a distributed computing project has managed to crack a previously uncracked message that was encrypted using the Enigma machine, reports CNet.

The M4 Project began in early January, as an attempt to break three original Enigma messages that were intercepted in 1942 and are thought never to have been broken by the Allied forces.

According to the organisers of M4, their open source message-breaking application managed to crack one of the three messages early last week. With two messages still to break, the M4 Project is looking for computer users to download its application and help out.