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.
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