Google Labs Starts Up a Blockchain Division

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Here's a fun new report from Bloomberg: Google is forming a blockchain division. The news comes hot on the heels of a Bloomberg report from yesterday that quoted Google's president of commerce as saying, "Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to." Web3 is apparently becoming a thing at Google. Shivakumar Venkataraman, a longtime Googler from the advertising division, is running the blockchain group, which lives under the nascent "Google Labs" division that was started about three months ago.

Labs is home to "high-potential, long-term projects," basically making it the new Google X division (X was turned into a less-Google-focused Alphabet division in 2016). Bavor used to be vice president of virtual reality, and Labs contains all of those VR and augmented reality projects, like the "Project Starline" 3D video booth and Google's AR goggles. [...] Not much is known about the group, except that it is focused on "blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data storage technologies." Google's growth into a web giant has made it a pioneer in distributed computing and database development, so maybe it could make some noise in this area as well.

Thank God

[rsilvergun]

finally crypto is dead. If it's one thing I know about Google, anything they touch that isn't android, gmail or search has about a 12 month shelf life.

Re:

[taustin]

Came here to say the same thing.

Re: Thank God

[Anonymouse Cowtard]

Yeah, what has Google Labs ever done that has endured? It's where projects go to slowly die. This is what is meant by "high potential, long term".

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[Anonymous Coward]

finally crypto is dead. If it's one thing I know about Google, anything they touch that isn't android, gmail or search has about a 12 month shelf life.

I did hear a rumor that YouTube is still around.

I could see this turning into a Life of Brian clip.

"Well obviously YouTube, YouTube goes without saying, but apart from android, gmail, search and youtube..."

"Chrome is quite popular... oh and Chromebooks must have been around for a while..."

etc.

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[onefriedrice]

Declaring the death of crypto? That is so original. I'm sure nobody has ever thought of that.

https://www.bitcoinisdead.org/ [bitcoinisdead.org]

iT Was A Joke

[rsilvergun]

Crypto won't die until it's regulated like other financial instruments. As soon as that happens the money laundering will dry up and the market will crash. Assuming our civilization doesn't collapse in the meantime.

Mind you, I'm not saying Crypto will collapse our civilization, but the massive amounts of wasted electronics and energy ain't exactly helping. The main thing though is that if our civilization isn't functional enough to ban something as clearly detrimental as crypto then we haven't got much

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[mamba-mamba]

Bitcoin must go. Who must go?

If you needed proof crypto payments are traceable

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

This is it. Google would never invest into anything they can't extract and monetize data out of.

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[onefriedrice]

Did anyone doubt that blockchain payments are traceable? It only takes 5 seconds worth of investigation to know that blockchain transactions are open ("traceable") but the participants are pseudonymous (so it doesn't matter unless you leak your own identity). I'm not sure why you think this is some kind of "gotcha" moment.

Your fiat payments through centralized money services (banks, digital wallets like Venmo and GPay, brokerages, remittance companies, credit/debit card companies, payment processors, etc

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[mrclevesque]

> but the participants are pseudonymous

"While Bitcoin wallet records are open for public view, there is no inbuilt system identifying who the owner is. Bitcoin does not intrinsically need a ‘know your customer’ (KYC) identity proof for you to have a wallet. This is the origin of the myth of Bitcoin anonymity. "However, crypto exchanges are solving this issue by requiring a KYC ID before they let you conduct transactions, then sharing the data with law enforcement authorities. In other words,

All of GAFA will eventually make Blockchains

[Sethron]

This is a smart move by Alphabet, because the future of Internet and its monetisation rests on blockchain technology. Every VR, AR, Gaming Platform, will take advantage of new ways of making money in the future I predict. Why do you think China and Russia are banning cryptocurrencies?? Because they are a threat to the current standards which are bound to change.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Digital money is going to be huge

[mamba-mamba]

Big companies and various governments realize that controlling some type of digital currency will be huge. The problem is that people who like cryptocurrencies, at least the early adopters, are drawn to them specifically BECAUSE they are not controlled by a corporation or government. A cryptocurrency controlled by a government is the antithesis of what bitcoin was trying to accomplish. I doubt people will be any more enthusiastic about google controlling a cryptocurrency than they were about facebook. In f