So in the last 24 hours Google unveiled their Mobile Wallet scheme for Android phones, but PayPal doesn’t like this and have since filed a lawsuit against the search giants.
Not only are PayPal suing Google, but they are also taking two former executives – who are now employed by and in charge of the mobile payments at Google – to court over allegations of stolen information.
The complaint alleges “misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of fiduciary duty.” The problems have come from Osama Bedier, the former Vice President of Platform, Mobile and new ventures at PayPal. This was before Andy Rubin, Android’s main man, recruited him to come and work at Google, which wasn’t without the help of another ex PayPay employee Stephanie Tilenius (who now heads up Commerce and Payments at Google), who is also part of the lawsuit gives an outlined below thanks to her part in recruiting Osama Bedier.
By 2010, the executive in charge of the negotiations for PayPal was Osama Bedier. The executive in charge of the negotiations for Google was Andy Rubin. PayPal and Google had a deal finalized and signature-ready on October 26, 2010.
By that time, unbeknown to PayPal, Bedier had just finished a series of job interviews with Google senior executives, culminating with a meeting on October 21 between Bedier, Google Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg, and then-President of Google, Larry Page.
Though Google’s leadership had directed negotiations toward the October 26 finalization months earlier, it now balked when presented with the very deal they had requested. The companies had a term sheet, a two phase roll-out with dates, and all other details nailed down. But, in the interim, Google’s leadership had interviewed Bedier, rather than inking the October 26th deal, Google instead professed a shift in mindset on the entire structure of the deal at the last minute.
Bedier was first offered a job at Google on October 31st. He didn’t take it at first but eventually did in January, 2011. All of this coincided with Larry Page taking over as CEO, and a shift in Google’s strategy to build instead of partner in mobile payments.
The lawsuit notes that Bedier knew all of PayPal’s plans for mobile payments, as well as an internal detailed analysis of Google’s weaknesses in the same area. It also accuses him of storing “confidential eBay information in locations such as his non-PayPal computers, non-PayPal e-mail account, and an account on the remote computing service called ‘DropBox.’”
So did Osama Bedier sell PayPal’s information to Google? It should be an interesting couple of weeks for the search giant, but can anyone stop Google from taking a slice of every pie?