Chris points to:
Google once considered issuing its own currency, to be called Google Bucks, company Chairman Eric Schmidt said on stage in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress Tuesday.At the end of his keynote speech, Schmidt hit on a wide array of topics in response to audience questions. "We've had various proposals to have our own currency we were going to call Google Bucks," Schmidt said.
The idea was to implement a "peer-to-peer money" system. However, Google discovered that the concept is illegal in most areas, he said. Governments are typically wary of the potential for money laundering with such proposals. "Ultimately we decided we didn't want to get into that because of these issues," Schmidt said.
Offered without too much analysis. This confirms what we suspected - that they looked at it and decided not to. Technically, this is a plausible and expected decision that will be echoed by many conventional companies. I would expect Apple to do this too, and Microsoft know this line very well.
However we need to understand that this result is intentional, the powers that be want you to think this way. Banks want you to play according to their worldview, and they want you to be scared off their patch. Sometimes however they don't tell the whole truth, and as it happens, p2p is not illegal in USA or Europe - the largest markets. You are also going to find surprising friends in just about any third world country.
Still, google did their own homework, and at least they investigated. As a complicated company with many plays, they and they alone must do their strategy. Still, as we move into GFC-2 with the probability of mass bank nationalisations in order to save the payments systems, one wonders how history will perceive their choice.