Google may enter the world of blockchain technology soon, as Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce, stated on January 19 they were paying a lot of attention to the area. The latest development is an unofficial blockchain development division launch, which will also tackle areas like distributed cloud computing and data storage.
Shivakumar Venkataraman, engineering vice president for Google, would lead the blockchain division. However, the blockchain team would be under the Google Labs umbrella, which also hosts its AR and VR development teams, as well as the Area 120 in-house incubator. Venkataraman would be overseen by Clay Bavor, a veteran Googler and VP whose most recent role has seen him leading the company’s forward-looking efforts in virtual and augmented reality, including its cutting-edge holographic videoconferencing project known as Project Starline.
Google remained very wary of being associated with any cryptocurrency in particular, despite having been involved in certain blockchain projects. That’s not the case with its close competitors, as Meta (ex-Facebook) dived into the world of blockchain and cryptos by developing a custom blockchain, accompanied by a stablecoin and a digital wallet. However, analysts are claiming that the pressure Facebook posed on other digital giants is the actual reason for the blockchain division forming.
On the other hand, Google had a rather negative stance on cryptocurrencies, as the search engine giant even imposed bans on all cryptocurrency-related advertising including initial coin offerings, crypto exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice from its platforms.
However, its icy stance is beginning to melt. For instance, Google struck partnership deals with Coinbase and Bitpay, to allow customers to store cryptocurrency in digital cards. Furthermore, Google partnered with Bakkt, which allowed the users of the digital platform to spend cryptos on the Google Pay platform.
Nevertheless, Google is still not accepting direct crypto payments.
“Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.” Google’s president of commerce, Bill Ready, commented.
The news comes amid a turbulent start of 2022 for the crypto sector. In just a couple of weeks, Bitcoin and the rest of the top-performing cryptos managed to fall well below what the market could experience as a volatility issue. The entire crypto market lost almost $1 trillion in market capitalization, while currencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, and Cardano are deep in the red, with losses ranging anywhere from 12% all the way to 30% price losses in just seven days.