The mega-corporation Alphabet, which is behind Google and YouTube among other things, has been interested in Bitcoin (BTC) and its ilk for some time, as evidenced by its application for a license for a crypto-payments application in Singapore. New information demonstrating this interest has just been revealed by its CEO.
Alphabet seeks to “Blockchainize” its products and services
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, seems to be increasingly realizing the incredible potential for innovation that cryptocurrencies, especially distributed ledger technology (DLT), bring.
In an interview relayed by ExpovistaTV, Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, spoke about the prospects that blockchain technologies offer for the advent of Web3 (the evolution of the Internet after Web 2.0 brought by smartphones).
The Alphabet executive explains that his group “is very interested” in blockchains, and that they want to “support” these innovations:
“Whenever there’s innovation, I find it exciting, and I think it’s something we want to support as best we can (…) The Internet has always evolved, and it’s going to continue to evolve (…) we’ve benefited tremendously from open-source technologies with Google, so we intend to contribute to that.”
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet
Blockchains behind Youtube or Google maps?
When it comes to practical use cases of this technology from Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, Sundar Pichai mentions several of the services offered by the Alphabet group.
They would thus study, blockchain technologies to power layers of computing and services such as YouTube and Google Maps, although no specific details are given.
Its hosting offer Google Cloud could also benefit from these technologies. The latter service had already attempted a first rapprochement with the cryptosphere, back in 2020, with the EOS network designed by Block One.
The additional arrival of a GAFAM like Google/Alphabet in the race to open-source and Web3 may not be exciting (or even worrying) for some. Indeed, with Meta (Facebook) and Twitter already part of the COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance), the weight of the big multinational companies and their monopolies will be very heavy on the Web3, which is paradoxically more decentralized.