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Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, is venturing deeper into the blockchain space with the formation of a new group dedicated to distributed LEDGER technology
Shivakumar Venkataraman, Vice-President of Engineering at Google, will lead the effort to take the tech giant deeper into distributed computing and blockchain space.
According to a january 20 bloomberg, the new unit is focused on "blockchain and other next generation distributed computing and data storage technologies." the labs division is where google develops its virtual and augmented reality technologies, the additional report.
There was no mention of this year's buzzword "metaverse", but it is likely that this can be incorporated into an effort to follow with rivals like meta (formerly facebook).
Google’s other main rival, Microsoft, did mention the metaverse this week when it announced the $69 billion acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard
Google's wagering big on blockchain.
Google has not yet launched major public blockchain efforts, but has offered cloud services to blockchain and crypto enterprises.
In November, Google Labs was reorganized under VP Clay Bavor. The movement was part of a wider push to work on "long-term technology projects that are in direct support of our core products and businesses," he said.
There were no further details on specific technologies under the new division or whether the research giant would develop its own enterprise distributed ledger solution.
In September, Google Cloud partnered with Dapper Labs to collaborate on network scaling on its Flow blockchain which is the backbone of some huge decentralized applications (dApps) and NFT collections.
In a related development, Google Pay has engaged Paypal Arnold Goldberg to strengthen its flagging payment application. The plan is to widen the platform to include all sorts of payment channels, including cryptocurrencies.
Bill Ready, president of technology giant trade, said:
We give a lot of attention to cryptography. As consumer and merchant demand evolves, we will evolve accordingly."
Google pay has associated itself with crypto exchanges such as COINBASE in an effort to store crypto assets in "digital maps", while asking users to pay in traditional currencies.
The move is part of a 'wider strategy to partner with a wider range of financial services, including cryptocurrencies,' Ready said Bloomberg.
