Speaking at MWC this week, Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, revealed during an audience Q&A session that the company once considered its own digital currency.
It’s not known exactly how advanced the plans got, but the broad strokes of the idea would have seen a peer-to-peer financial system, in a similar vein to Bitcoin. Various proposals and ideas were considered for ‘Google Bucks’, but there were simply too many legal and logistical issues, and the concept was mothballed.
By Schmidt’s admission, the concept is fundamentally illegal in most countries, particularly since such systems tend to facilitate money laundering and tax evasion. “Ultimately, we decided that we didn’t want to get into that because of these issues,” he said.
However, Schmidt also added that, while P2P money is – broadly speaking – illegal, “other than that, it’s a great idea”.
via IT World