A couple of days ago, we got a tip pointing us to a YouTube page with a bit of interesting information. On Google’s official account there was a placeholder page for a “Google Press Conference”. We we reached out to Google about this, they said they were checking into it, and the page immediately was taken down (but not before we snagged a screenshot, naturally). Weird.
Well, weird until the news broke on Bloomberg today that Google is planning to unveil a mobile payment service on Thursday. The announcement is expected to involve the NFC chips built into the Nexus S.
The reason we believe the accidentally live YouTube page was about the NFC announcement is because the dates line up. In the space where the video would normally be, the screen read: “This live event will start in 78 hours. Please come back later.” Below that, it read “Streamed live on May 26, 2011.”
And Google only tends to do live streams when they have something really big to announce.
Bloomberg says that members of the press have been sent invitations to this event in New York City. But we haven’t gotten one. Nor does it seem like others have yet. And Google isn’t talking.
But Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s head of commerce and payments, will be onstage with us tomorrow at TechCrunch Disrupt. We’ll be sure to bring it up.
Update: And sure enough, I post and Google reaches out to invite us to the event! They won’t comment on if it’s NFC-related but there is an event in their NYC office from 12-2 on Thursday. We’ll be covering it.
[thanks Michael]
YouTube provides a platform for you to create, connect and discover the world’s videos. The company recently redesigned the site around its hundreds of millions of channels. Partners from major movie studios, record labels, web original creators, viral stars, and millions more all have channels on YouTube. YouTube is predominantly an ad-supported platform, but also offers rental options for a growing number of movie titles. YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who...
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
