Google Purchases sighting!

Techdirt just published Google Leaves Their Wallet Exposed. Like the Lockness Monster, Google Purchases surfaced briefly, was sighted and quickly disappeared again. Apparently a sign up page for 'Google Purchases' was left (I assume mistakenly) exposed to the public, until it was discovered and pulled offline. Here's the link with a screenshot of the sign up flow for the service - a (now offline) website for "Google Purchases."

Set aside the prerequisite massive registered/verified user base to even make a person to person payment platform palatable for users, let alone merchants - an incredibly complex security and fraud prevention/detection system is an absolute requirement to make it a go. Hence why Yahoo!, Citibank and eBay all abandoned their attempts at competing with Paypal, even with each managing $billions in online transactions. Just like the Lockness Monster, Google may be better served leaving Purchases as urban legend than surface the creature many of its competitors tried to engage only to ultimately submit to...