All day in my RSS reader, I've been hearing about how PayPal is coming to the Android Market. Someone ripped apart the latest Market APK and found references to PayPal, assumed this was new, and assumed that it meant PayPal support would be soon be hitting the Market.

The problem is it's not new, we found PayPal references in the market going all the way back to 3.0.26, the first release of the current market design. 3.0.26 came out in July.

Don't believe me? Go grab yourself a copy of 3.0.26, decompile it, and search the files for "paypal." There's a ton. You don't even need to look at the code. It's right in the filenames.

PayPal support has been in the market for almost 4 months, and we haven't seen anything. It's probably the same deal as the Music store. Code and Icons for the Music Store are in the Market APK, but all the red tape needs to be worked out before it is activated for users. The PayPal code isn't what's stopping Market integration; what's needed is the service agreement.

So lets all pump the breaks on PayPal. The discovery of files isn't evidence of an imminent announcement, this stuff has been around for months. In fact, when you look at the recent news between the two companies, a Google/PayPal partnership seems pretty unlikely.

PayPal is suing Google over alleged thief of trade secrets during the negotiations with PayPal. PayPal's claims the following in their lawsuit: A deal with Google was finalized on Oct. 26th (the same day that bogus announcement went out), but Google suddenly dropped everything and walked away. During the negotiations, Google was holding a series of secret job interviews with PayPal's negotiator. They said "no" to PayPal's deal, hired away a few of PayPal's executives, and started their own solution. A few months later the man who used to be negotiating PayPal's deal is on stage, in a Google T-Shirt, announcing Google Wallet.

So talk to PayPal about mobile under the guise of a partnership, find out who at their company is important, hire them, and cancel the deal. It sounds like Google stabbed PayPal in the back, and PayPal is pissed about it. It definitely doesn't sound like two companies that are going to cuddle up and have a joint announcement. The context of an announcement like this doesn't make sense. The two companies have to make nice first.