Hope You're Not Buying Anything Weird, Google Wants to Read Your Bank Statement
Google will start offering checking accounts next year, because why shouldn’t everything in the world be controlled by only four companies?
The search engine that’s intimately acquired your gross browsing habits will launch the project (codenamed “Cache” because Google is a bunch of nerds) in partnership with Citigroup and the Stanford Federal Credit Union.
This headfirst dive into the world of finance is the most daring foray into banking from Silicon Valley yet, with the possible exception of Facebook’s dead-in-the-water attempt to create a global currency/maybe take over the world.
Citigroup and Stanford will run the boring day-to-day business of operating the checking accounts, which will be branded under their names, not Googles.
So you might be wondering, what does our old pal Google get outta this? Well, it gets the only thing that Google truly wants: data.
A checking account is a relatively low rung on the financial ladder (just one above the piggy bank my old man used to rifle through when he was drunk). But Google can use a checking account to monitor consumer behavior and map spending patterns.
Google executive Caesar Sengupta told the Wall Street Journal that Google does not intend to sell customers’ data. (But they definitely will draw conclusions from that data and sell that or use it on their own advertising platform.)
“If we can help more people do more stuff in a digital way online, it’s good for the internet and good for us,” Sengupta told the WSJ.
Sengupta explained the rationale behind tapping established financial institutions instead of creating a Google bank. Google seems to be somewhat aware (more so than Facebook at least) that folks are terrified that big tech is taking over the world and intruding more and more into their personal lives.
“Our approach is going to be to partner deeply with banks and the financial system. It may be the slightly longer path, but it’s more sustainable.”
Folks will have to use the Google Pay app to access their Google checking account. (Whoooaaa! That’s some sweet vertical integration, my dudes. *electric guitar riff*) If successful, this could fatten up Google Pay’s user base, which is already on track to hit 100 million users worldwide by 2020.
Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), one of the most vocal opponents to big tech on Capitol Hill, told CNBC that he was concerned about these big tech platforms “entering into new fields before there are some regulatory rules of the road.”
“Once they get in, the ability to extract them out is going to be virtually impossible,” said Warner.
The timing of this news is what I would categorise as “not great.” Barely two months ago, 50 U.S. states and territories launched investigations into Google’s “potential monopolistic behaviour.”
Regulators and lawmakers around the world are growing increasingly concerned that the search giant is repeatedly overstepping its bounds when it comes to privacy, data collection, and anti-competitive practices.
This is a colossal shift in lawmakers’ attitudes towards big tech. And tech prophet George Gilder says it’s only a matter of time before this empire of cards comes crashing down.
Not just for your favourite porn finding machine, but for Amazon, Facebook, and all the big tech companies who carved up the internet in the early 2000s and pushed out all the competition.
George is the fella who predicted the iPhone 13 years before its release. He forecast the rise of Netflix more than a decade before it existed. And he tipped off President Ronald Reagan that the microchip would change the world.
