PayPal loves developers so much, it’s giving them free netbooks

PayPal and eBay executives are wrapping up their keynote presentations today at PayPal Innovate 2009, where they’re offering details about how application developers can use the newly-opened PayPal platform. A lot of their rhetoric has emphasized the idea that developers form PayPal’s next big set of customers (after consumers and online merchants). So at the end of the keynotes, PayPal announced a particularly generous form of customer appreciation — all conference attendees would receive free netbook computers.

I actually watched the keynote webcast from home, so I haven’t seen the netbooks yet, or heard any details about the devices. Still, it suggests a bit of one-upmanship when it comes to developer freebies — all the attendees at Google I/O in May received free Android phones. If this continues, I expect to see Apple’s Steve Jobs flinging MacBooks into the audience at next summer’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

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