Google Checkout preparing to launch

Google Checkout -- what the press calls GBuy -- is getting closer to launch.  Just minutes ago, checkout.google.com was given a CNAME record pointing to checkout.l.google.com which resolves to a ton of IP addresses.  This probably means they have some pretty impressive load balancing going on and the product's uptime and performance is very important. 

According to Eric Schmidt, Google Checkout will not be like PayPal (if you mean person to person transactions) -- but it will be very much like PayPal if you mean a way to accept payment for items online through a website.

On a related note, the same day picasaweb was released, they did the same thing for the domain "picasaweb.google.com".  I don't know if Google Checkout is one day, one week or one year down the road, but when they add these CNAME records you can bet they are getting pretty serious.