Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reports that Google is to compete with Amazon and eBay by offering a new ad model to enable advertisers to let Google be their shopping site, where you click buy now and checkout directly at Google.

This is beyond Google Shopping or Google Checkout, this is buying the product on Google.com.

There is huge amount of buzz around this news over the weekend.

For those not on AdWords yet, if Google takes this approach, it means you will likely need to get on AdWords. I can just imagine the search results interface, with all these Google merchant pages and then trying to find the organic listings somewhere beneath it all. It is not hard to imagine at all. 8 years ago, you’d think I am drunk but now, anything is possible.

One advertiser said at WebmasterWorld, “It appears ecommerce is heading in a direction where organic visibility continues to shrink and control over the payment process is being lost.”

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.