Why Google Has Sat on the Web3 Sidelines (bloomberg.com) 56
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google doesn't accept cryptocurrencies for ad buying, its payments service or its app store. Until recently, Google had banned several categories of crypto ads. Google hasn't touched NFTs. In a recent interview with Bloomberg Television, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai copped that he "dabbled" in crypto, but didn't own any. Some staffers at Google have also dabbled with the technology, according to multiple current and former employees at the company. Still, Google hasn't laid out a plan for inserting itself into web3. A Google spokesperson said its mobile payments service is "working with several companies" such as Coinbase, Bitpay and Gemini "to support crypto cards, which transact in fiat currencies."
There are a few reasons Google might not want to dive into the new arena -- one is defensive. Web3 evangelists see the technology as "decentralized," controlled by its many participants. They draw stark contrasts to the business models of Google, Facebook and Amazon. These boosters see the blockchain as inherently trustworthy, unlike the current web titans. "Can't do evil > don't be evil," tweeted Chris Dixon, an Andreessen Horowitz partner, in a clear dig at Google. And many Silicon Valley visions for web3 activity, search engines and media decidedly don't involve advertising, Google's main business. But the company isn't completely averse to cryptocurrency. Google has been willing to take crypto money for its cloud business. In September, the division signed a deal with Dapper Labs, a Canadian blockchain company. It also has agreements with Hadera, Block.one and others. Given web3's escalating computing demands, Google will certainly look to ink more of these. (Google will have to weigh crypto's energy needs versus the company's zero-emissions targets.) In some ways, the wait-and-see strategy is typical of Pichai, who has a more deliberate management style than his predecessors. And that doesn't mean the company isn't quietly exploring the technology.
There are a few reasons Google might not want to dive into the new arena -- one is defensive. Web3 evangelists see the technology as "decentralized," controlled by its many participants. They draw stark contrasts to the business models of Google, Facebook and Amazon. These boosters see the blockchain as inherently trustworthy, unlike the current web titans. "Can't do evil > don't be evil," tweeted Chris Dixon, an Andreessen Horowitz partner, in a clear dig at Google. And many Silicon Valley visions for web3 activity, search engines and media decidedly don't involve advertising, Google's main business. But the company isn't completely averse to cryptocurrency. Google has been willing to take crypto money for its cloud business. In September, the division signed a deal with Dapper Labs, a Canadian blockchain company. It also has agreements with Hadera, Block.one and others. Given web3's escalating computing demands, Google will certainly look to ink more of these. (Google will have to weigh crypto's energy needs versus the company's zero-emissions targets.) In some ways, the wait-and-see strategy is typical of Pichai, who has a more deliberate management style than his predecessors. And that doesn't mean the company isn't quietly exploring the technology.
What is this crap doing here? (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time I heard about this web 3 nonsense was on Slashdot yesterday. From that story, there is nothing to it. At all. Now more of it? Is this some sort of Slashdot compaign?
Re:What is this crap doing here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
Crypto currencies are for laundering money only. No country with a central bank and credit services needs them.
NFT are Beanie BAbies for people too young to remember other investment fads.
There's no future in the web in dumb ideas
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Crypto currencies are for laundering money only.
Are you kidding? They work great for financing terrorism and drug cartels, too!
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Which are, of course, just other forms of money laundering.
Re: Agreed (Score:1)
Re: Agreed (Score:1)
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Re:What is this crap doing here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Web3 is a dumbass buzzword made up by cryptobros for anti-efficient technology that offers no benefits to 99%+ of users, that's why Google has "sat on the sidelines" of it along with virtually everyone else. It's just too bad that nobody branded privacy-respecting, self-hostable technology with end-to-end encryption and at least a few shits given about efficiency as "Web3" before the cryptobros got to it.
Re:What is this crap doing here? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, some crypto bros have figured out that no one outside of a small cadre cares about - or will ever care about - cryptocurrency. So they came up with the vague concept of “web3”, hoping that some people will see it and think “oh there’s a 3 in it, maybe it’s the official successor to Internet 2 or something” rather than just another attempt to create buzz around cryptocurrency.
Problem is - as soon as one of them opens their mouth it becomes obvious what it is.
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Everything you've ever heard of you've heard of somewhere first. What on earth makes you surprised to see a story about it twice on the same website?
Re: What is this crap doing here? (Score:3)
Yeah! This fails all smell tests. What actual problems does it solve? What academic scholars of institutions are behind it? Is it a joint industry effort? If so which groups are involved?
According to Wikipedia: no, it has none of that. This is just speculative or wishful thinking from random dudes on the internet. No actual problems are solved and there is no industry consensus behind it.
Besides, web3.0 already refers to the semantic web. Anyone can declare "web3" to mean anything they want. It doesn't mean
Re: What is this crap doing here? (Score:2)
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It does seem odd how /. is pushing this 'Web 3' thing...
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They will frontpage anything we will argue about. This qualifies. Putting two of these stories there in one day is cheap, but so what else is new?
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Is this some sort of Slashdot compaign?
Not just Slashdot. It's being pushed everywhere. The "web3" wikipedia page was created 35 days ago. It seems to be coming from people like Gavin Wood (Etherium co-founder) and associates. The definition is nebulous and varies depending on who is explaining it.
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Google doesn't need Web3, they already have Google Play credits. Web3 is for losers who missed out on Web2.
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Reddit, Gamestop and others have very recently gotten into Web3, but according to this article [slate.com]:
"A perhaps more consequential recent development was the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s Web3 lobbying push in Washington, D.C., in early October. The firm, which has invested heavily in cryptocurrency and other blockchain technologies, said it sent executives to Capitol Hill and the White House to promote Web3 as a solution to Silicon Valley consolidation and to propose regulations for the burgeoning virtual ecosystem."
There are people who want to get the story out, and they are paying to do so.
bullshit (Score:3)
> "Can't do evil > don't be evil"
Umm, your unprovable and buggy software 'contracts' can do all kinds of bad things and undoing those things might be impossible and will definitely be expensive.
If you are going to make software that your treat like it has legal authority, where its transactions are not reversible and no one can be held accountable, then you need to build the software in a different way, perhaps in the way we build software for safety systems or for space travel. But you can't just grab Java, make DSL, go nuts, and expect perfection.
I do not understand the push for banking without accountability. Accountability is a key component of our financial system.
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The only truism of technology is, "If you build a new technology, someone will find a way to do evil with it." Distributed control only makes the evil more distributed.
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Distributed evil is less evil than centralized evil, at least in reach.
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Distributed evil is less evil than centralized evil, at least in reach.
Distributed evil is also harder to fight, which means that you're likely to end up with more of it.
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Because there is, as yet, no web3 (Score:2)
Currently, you have cryptocurrencies/nfts as some sort of thing, but it's not really a 'web technology'.
Some people are tossing in blockchain as a buzzword together with other buzzwords like AI and ML and waving their hands saying vaguely 'web3' but they don't have an actual concrete concept to latch onto.
The closest has been LBRY, and that's just putting bittorrent links on a blockchain, with limited applicability and traditional internet services to make it actually viable. Those traditional internet serv
Web 2 fork (Score:4, Insightful)
Calling it "Web3" does not, in any way, alleviate my concerns that all this cryptocurrency is just a huge scam.
Trademarked (Score:2)
I thought Web 3 was trademarked just to stop the idiotic pattern. If this gets any further I hope the owner starts enforcing their trademark.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Can't do evil? It's literally all evil. (Score:2)
"Crypto" is literally ALL evil. That's why rich people love it so much. It's a complete unregulated license to do evil crap. It has no value beyond scams.
The only redeeming thing about it is that it's just rich jerks scamming each other. For once poor people and elderly people are not the target of the scams.
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I agree with you, but just wanted to point out that there are plenty of rich people who won't touch cryptocurrency with a ten foot pole. And that's because, well, they agree with you, too.
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I am pretty sure next year they will say things like "Corna'ed" but hey, that's just my bet that no matter what superficial ways we find to debate technology as nerds, it will be natural the way we are fucked. Queue up the gain of function trolls.
Web3? Pfft! (Score:2)
crash is coming once PR starts marketing it (Score:2)
Cryptocurrency (Score:3, Insightful)
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So how much cash do you keep on hand? Is it in your pocket or under a mattress? Just asking because I wonder if after a hurricane it's a better bet to check corpse pockets or mattresses.
Btw, congrats for being an American.
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Btw, congrats for being an American.
Right, because being concerned of the very obvious dangers of having all your money only accessible through an internet source is only an American thing.
I have plenty of friends here in California who carry no cash. They're going to be hating life if we have a major earthquake and they need food.
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I have never understood the idea of relying on Internet connectivity to spend money. After a hurricane, natural disaster, or political coup Internet access is one of the first things to fail. Cash doesn't require Internet or power to spend. That alone is a big win.
Well, sure, depends on whether you are talking about physical cash - notes and coins - and whether:
a. You actually have some available to you, when a natural disaster occurs, because you won't be getting any out of an ATM with the power down
b. There's actually shops in the local area still active after a natural disaster, that still have power, because it's going to be difficult to use that physical cash if there isn't.
c. The scale of the natural disaster - if it's massively widespread, as in totally unprec
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Red herring (Score:2)
The issue is that of power consolidation, not hierarchy. Be it Google or Ether as a singleton at the center, the outcome is exactly the same - both are closed ecosystems, hostile to adversarial interoperability [eff.org] due to consolidating network effects and subsequent stratification.
If you truly desire for "web3", engineer the architecture as an open platform where you explicitly let in the powerless - think usenet instead of reddit, irc instead of discord etc.
The way this breaks in crypto is that you always end
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If you truly desire for "web3", engineer the architecture as an open platform where you explicitly let in the powerless - think usenet instead of reddit, irc instead of discord etc.
I have had my domain with website and email and all for like 25 years. I didn't have to do anything special to get it. It wasn't even expensive. I have my choice of tools and sites to host it, I can put whatever I want on it. I'm not exactly certain how it would even be possible to be more open. I suppose getting an ipv4 address might be more challenging these days?
USENET still exists. Reddit is winning. IRC still exists. Discord is winning. In neither case did someone send goons out to kneecap the
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DNS is not at the stake here, yet. Ask 10 years down the line again, once TOS for unique internet becomes that of Apple and Google. This is not a bogus comparison - consumer market for internet application presence shifts its visibility from to their app stores.
Yes, DNS will continue to exist. Just as IRC or USENET does. The mere existence is still irrelevant when we're measuring market power though.
Why? Simple. (Score:2)
Google is already "decentralized" -- I can't recall the number, but they have thousands and thousands of servers ... :-)
Get your version numbers straight! (Score:2)
Web 3.0 was introduced 15 years ago [nytimes.com]. It was based on machine learning and the semantic web [techtarget.com]. We're already up to Web 5.1. I'm expecting the 5.1.1 patch any day now. What these people are proposing would be Web 5.2. Can't anyone get their version numbers right?