I'm not the betting type, but I could see why Google might do this. A big strength of the iphone as a app buying platform is that everyone already has a payment

I'm not the betting type, but I could see why Google might do this. A big strength of the iphone as a app buying platform is that everyone already has a payment method set up, so you just have to click a button to buy. Google could require people to buy the phones with Google Payments, then they'd automatically have a "spend money" button hooked up, ready to buy apps and whatever else.