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The advantage for users is that a single Google login - yes, you will need a Google account - will serve for a variety of retailers, once it is primed with your credit card details and a delivery address. The benefit for Google, in terms of its search strategy, is the extra data it will capture about a user's preferences and purchases.

All such transactions will be archived for the user, so that they have a history of their activities, and they can filter out emails from the stores bought from, so they don't end up in the personal inbox.

Importantly for Google, the scheme is also integrated with Google's AdWords program, its search advertising cash cow. AdWords advertisers using Checkout have the icon displayed alongside their listing in search results, and every £1 spent on AdWords clears £10-worth of Checkout merchant fees.

These fees run at 15p and 1.5 per cent of the transaction for using the service, but Google Checkout is being offered free to retailers until the end of 2007, to encourage uptake.

'Online shopping is made easier, faster and safer,'

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said Google's Senior Product Manager, Jerry Dischler. 'You only need to go through the trouble of entering your payment details once and then you can surf and shop until your fingers drop at dozens of online retailers.'

It will be easy for retailers to integrate the service into their sites, claims Google: apart from being free to use, retailers can add Checkout options with a simple bit of copy and paste code, or can more tightly integrate it via a published API.

The UK Google Checkout can be found at checkout.google.co.uk and a list of participating retailers - including the likes of eBuyer, 3M and empiredirect - can be found here.

Google Checkout launched in the States in June 2006 - Google opens the Checkout - in what was seen as a clear move onto eBay's PayPal territory. This prompted eBay to ban the use of Checkout as a payment option, but peace subsequently broke out, between the two companies, at least with regards to text-based advertising and 'click-to-call' advertising. Under the deal, Google become the exclusive text-based advertising provider for eBay outside the United States.

Ten months on from the launch, Google has thousands of sellers and millions of buyers using Checkout in the United States, a spokesperson told us.