Google ready to roll out online payment service

Google unveils its much-anticipated online payment service Thursday.

Google hopes the service, called "Checkout," will make online shopping more convenient and give advertisers another reason to pour more money into the Internet search leader.

"Checkout" will let people enter credit card account information under a single account and then buy merchandise from a wide variety of merchants who buy ads through Google. The move risks alienating one of its biggest advertisers, eBay, which runs the Web's leading payment service, PayPal.

Google doesn't view its service as a PayPal competitor. But eBay signaled its concerns last month when it formed an alliance with Yahoo. That deal will make PayPal the preferred payment provider on the Internet's most trafficked Web site.