Many people know Google for its global domination of the internet, but it has especially been at the forefront of innovation in digital technology over the past few years. ‘Alphabet’, Google’s parent company, is now looking to get a slice of the blockchain pie.
Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, recently stated that his company was definitely interested in utilising blockchain technology and Web3. According to Pichai, transformative innovation is something that the company supports and the CEO stated that Google is hoping to make a contribution to the blockchain in the future.
Powerful technology with broad applications
It’s easy to see why Google is taking a keen interest in the blockchain. Technology is changing how businesses operate and the global tech giant wants to be part of this revolution by taking significant strides to lay its stake in the crypto ecosystem. Google hopes to take advantage of the increased adoption of blockchain supported disintermediated transactions. More and more companies are turning to blockchain technology to cut out middlemen in favour of peer-to-peer transactions supported by smart contracts.
According to Pichai, Google hopes to support blockchain solutions as best as it can. Google’s head of strategy for digital assets, Richard Widmann, stated that the company will be looking into how it can offer services directly to developers within the blockchain space. The tech giant plans to give businesses that utilise blockchain technology, access to their cloud computing services. Google also wants to add NFTs to its current web platforms, even planning to enable cryptocurrency payments.
Success in the crypto world could help Google move away from being reliant on advertising and diversify its income streams even more. By diving into the crypto universe, it will meet the growing demand for storage and computing services offered by remote third-party data centres. This would mean they become even more dominant in a market that is rapidly growing.
Google has been promoting its cloud computing services as ‘the cleanest cloud in the industry’, and as being secure and sustainable, with hopes of attracting blockchain developers to their cloud. According to Google, developers would help scale up their business more easily while using its infrastructure.
What the critics say
What makes blockchain technology so attractive is that it operates on a decentralised network. That means that it basically does not belong to a particular individual or organisation. Critics believe that Google’s move may be in contradiction to the very core of what blockchain technology is all about. They claim that the deployment of blockchain nodes on their cloud will consequentially mean that these nodes will be maintained by Google, which goes against the idea of a decentralisation.
However, there is still a lot of debate about what centralisation is and what it isn’t. Some critics believe that true centralisation only occurs when only one entity is in control of the majority of the processes including mining, validation of blocks, and confirmation of transactions. This won’t likely be the case with Google as it will only be renting its cloud services to users.