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Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

blockworks.co

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Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#71

Post by sundarurfriend »

JofArnold wrote: post #62
axg11 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you honestly say the "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach failed? Google scraps a lot of products, but they still have many great products: Gmail/GSuite, Android, YouTube, GCP, Nest... Each of those is a successful tech company in their own right.

~Gmail: acquisition~ EDIT: nope, I remembered wrong; PB did it while at Google. GSuite: a product of several acquisitions Android: acquisition YouTube: acquisition Nest: acquisition Sure, they may have improved them. But definitely not spawned from blooming flowers.

> Gmail: acquisition

Wasn't Gmail someone's 20%-time project, within Google?

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#72

Post by thebean11 »

Retric wrote: post #69
thebean11 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean people running the infrastructure? Or developing the software? We don't have to speculate on either. The infrastructure / nodes are paid for by some combination of inflation (block rewards) and transaction fees, depending on the network. The software is pretty similar to any other open source software. There are open source devs who will contribute for free, companies who will give grants for features the…

Major blockchains are by definition the survivors at this point, but a great many have already bit the dust. In the end the single point of failure is always going to be the value of the coin on the open market, 100% of 0$ doesn’t pay server costs.

Sure but it's not exactly random which chains went to zero. BTC isn't going to hit $0 due to chance, not sure if that's what you're implying.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#73

Post by jillesvangurp »

This makes actual sense for Google. From a technical point of view a block chain is a database with some interesting properties that are useful in some cases. Most major database companies are not really doing anything with this technology yet. And yet there are enough interesting applications and use cases out there that are not pyramid schemes, scams, or bullshit that you could argue that that is probably a mistake long term. So, why not put some R&D money into this?

People get side tracked by all the crypto eutopians and bullshitters out there and the emotional roller coaster that is the valuation of Bitcoin, which from a technical point of view was an interesting proof of concept (it works, and it seems really resilient against people trying to hack it). But it is also deeply flawed from a technical point of view. It doesn't scale very well. It's expensive to run (by design even). And it requires an amount of electricity energy that would be enough to run a few small countries. That makes using it for it's originally intended purpose, a non starter. Paying for stuff with Bitcoin is so ludicrously expensive and slow that doing so just stopped being a thing. Basically, paying for a cup of coffee with bitcoin would cost more than enough to pay for a nice coffee machine. That also makes it useless for banking. Transferring money is not cheap but cheaper than that.

But not bad for a V1 and it's kind of old news since there are lots of solutions to these challenges. A decentralized database that is tamper proof, scales, and runs efficiently would be just the kind of product people might want to use for all sorts of things. Which is why there are some serious companies looking at this stuff with increasing interest. The likes of IBM, SAP, etc. can hardly be accused of running pyramid schemes. It's not what drives them. But making money is. And when banks and other serious business are finding uses for current block chains, they smell money.

So Google getting involved with this stuff is probably not the worst idea they've had recently. Amazon provides managed blockchains as well in AWS. So does Microsoft. Technically, Google is a bit late to the party.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#74

Post by dqpb »

notreallyserio wrote: post #54
dqpb wrote: post #31

5 years from now: > Google tries to sunset Blockchain Unit, but can’t

> Google no longer accepts GoogleBucks for cloud compute services. The product didn't make sense, people were using compute VMs to pay for the compute VMs.

> people were using compute VMs to pay for the compute VMs

Lol, genius. In other news, "Shell’s Massive Carbon Capture Plant Is Emitting More Than It’s Capturing"

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#75

Post by Retric »

thebean11 wrote: post #72
Retric wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major blockchains are by definition the survivors at this point, but a great many have already bit the dust. In the end the single point of failure is always going to be the value of the coin on the open market, 100% of 0$ doesn’t pay server costs.

Sure but it's not exactly random which chains went to zero. BTC isn't going to hit $0 due to chance, not sure if that's what you're implying.

By the same token, BTC or other coin hitting zero is not just a question of chance. Suppose BTC had a large dip in value and a similar drop in mining. What are the odds people would focus on repeated double spend attacks for the lulz thus dropping the value to zero?

I am not saying that’s likely today, but rather that it’s easy to over estimate resilience in the case of black swan events.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#76

Post by langitbiru »

kaycebasques wrote: post #23
manningthegoose wrote: post #13

It's possible that this project was created as a sort of L8+ engineer/manager retention program. There's been some reporting that high level execs have been leaving GAMMA companies for blockchain/crypto projects with high payout potential[1]. I wonder if Google is heading in this direction to toss these people a bone with the hopes they'll stay. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/technology/silicon-valley...

Is GAMMA the new FAANG? * Google * Amazon * Microsoft * ??? * Apple

Or TAAAMM. Companies with hug TAMs.

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1484571438442967042

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#77

Post by JaimeThompson »

dqpb wrote: post #74
notreallyserio wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google no longer accepts GoogleBucks for cloud compute services. The product didn't make sense, people were using compute VMs to pay for the compute VMs.

> people were using compute VMs to pay for the compute VMs Lol, genius. In other news, "Shell’s Massive Carbon Capture Plant Is Emitting More Than It’s Capturing"

I though that was a joke, sadly you aren't joking.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kb43x/shell-quest-carbon-ca...

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#78

Post by vanviegen »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #73

This makes actual sense for Google. From a technical point of view a block chain is a database with some interesting properties that are useful in some cases. Most major database companies are not really doing anything with this technology yet. And yet there are enough interesting applications and use cases out there that are not pyramid schemes, scams, or bullshit that you could argue that that is probably a mistake…

> The likes of IBM, SAP, etc. can hardly be accused of running pyramid schemes.

No, their game is selling boatloads of senior consultancy hours. They hardly seem invested in blockchains themselves.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#79

Post by thebean11 »

Retric wrote: post #75
thebean11 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it's not exactly random which chains went to zero. BTC isn't going to hit $0 due to chance, not sure if that's what you're implying.

By the same token, BTC or other coin hitting zero is not just a question of chance. Suppose BTC had a large dip in value and a similar drop in mining. What are the odds people would focus on repeated double spend attacks for the lulz thus dropping the value to zero? I am not saying that’s likely today, but rather that it’s easy to over estimate resilience in the case of black swan events.

No need to speculate, look at the price and hash rate charts in 2017. The more recent hashrate drop was even bigger. Still no successful attacks.

There's a disincentive for people with mining power to attack the network (assuming they even have enough). It makes their hardware worth less so I can't imagine anyone doing it for kicks.

Agree though that something similar to what you're saying is what Bitcoin hitting $0 would look like. Certainly not impossible but I think it's extremely difficult attack. Even more so now than in 2017.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#80

Post by logicallee »

(This is not a sarcastic comment).

This is absolutely fantastic! Google is a $2.6 trillion company with more than 5 servers, which is the number of servers needed to support every user on Earth doing transactions all the time (7 billion users * 1 transaction = 7 billion transactions = 1 server, call it 5.) I really think they will be able to host a 60 gigabyte file and support 7 transactions per second without using the electricity of a small country - which is the status quo in blockhain.

I really hope they succeed. It's literally just integers in a database (if you count by the penny). I've hoped Google would do something like this for a long time, and a close second option would be for someone else to do the same thing simply riding on top of their shared spreadsheet infrastructure, like, oh hey by the way since this spreadsheet view easily scales to a billion users do you mind if we use it to save the planet?

As an added benefit I do believe the FBI or SEC could get some visibility on there so that their version doesn't end up a cesspool of fraud.

Go, Google! This is what you were born to do![1] I'm excited to see what they do with this.

[1] https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004-ipo-letter/ : "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one. "

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