GOOGLE BLOCKCHAIN: In a sign that big tech companies are nosing into blockchain, Google’s cloud-computing division is increasingly popping up in crypto news headlines, and top executives focused on Web3 are making the rounds with media. Last week, Google Cloud announced it would add 11 networks including Polygon, Optimism and Polkadot to its ‘BigQuery’ program for public datasets, originally set up for Bitcoin in 2018 and later expanded to additional chains including Ethereum, Litecoin and Dogecoin. “Over the past 18 months we’ve been investing in this space, we’ve continued to hire, we’ve continued to grow not only our business development and our go-to-market teams but also our product and engineering capabilities,” James Tromans, Google Cloud’s global head of Web3, told CoinDesk TV in an interview last week. “We’re not just fly-by-night.” On Sept. 14, Orderly Network, a decentralized exchange designed for white-labeling, posted on X that it would “exclusively develop off-chain components of DeFi infrastructure” on Google Cloud, and that it would be “actively involved in alpha testing Google’s Web3 innovations.” Over the past couple years, Google has announced business initiatives with BNB Chain, Celo, Polygon, Celo, Axie Infinity, LayerZero Labs, Solana and Tezos. It bears reminding readers that Google’s push to develop quantum computing has been posited as an existential threat to the blockchain industry, since theoretically such ultra-fast machines might be able to crack the cryptography underpinning digital-asset networks.
