As Australia becomes the latest battleground in the eBay+PayPal/Google Checkout wars it seems that the local and global press has missed the point.

Of course giving PayPal a monopoly on eBay would suck.

And surely it’s no surprise that Google was the only party that had a vested interest large enough to submit a 38 page document objecting to eBay locking down payments to PayPal.

So what IS the point?

In my opinion the fact that Google decided to submit the response to the ACCC anonymously says a lot about thinking at the highest levels in the company.

Last year Google backed down and cancelled a Google Checkout party that was scheduled to be on the same day as the annual PayPal merchants conference. Implicit in this decision was that the estimated $25M that eBay is worth to the Google AdWords business was more valuable than the projected benefit of converting PayPalers to Checkout.

12 months later it seems that not much has changed.

Maybe the decision has to do with falling adwords revenue growth or maybe it has to do with the fact that Google continues to struggle with being more than just a one trick pony.

Whatever it is, here’s hoping the outing of Google as the author stirs things up and Australia remains the forum of war.

It makes for some very interesting local activity.