Google, a prominent leader in Web2, is ramping up its attempts to rule over the third generation of the internet (web3). Richard Widmann started with Google as a lawyer and is now the division leader of Google Cloud’s strategy team.
Google Is Exploring a Blockchain-Web3 Link
During the Mainnet conference held in New York, he granted a question-and-answer session to a crypto news outlet. He restated the corporation’s stated goal of evolving with the ever-evolving internet. The interview suggested that Google agrees with the bitcoin community’s emphasis on decentralization and open-source development.
He claims that Google is considering building a connection between Web3 companies and blockchain technology. Thanks to the bridge, they will be able to access the required Node services in the cloud.
In a cryptographic network, “nodes” are individual computers constantly communicating with one another to ensure their integrity. A blockchain node’s purpose is to act as a central point of contact and coordination for completing numerous operations.
A node is any machine that participates in the Bitcoin network. The peer-to-peer Bitcoin protocol can transmit information about Bitcoin transactions and blocks between these nodes. The distributed network of computers facilitates the sharing and exchange.
Bitcoin nodes come in a few different flavors, but they’re all categorized by their tasks. In addition, there are times when the goal of decentralized technology results in jeopardy. Assuming that a few large corporations, like Amazon or Google, control the bulk of nodes on the blockchain, this is a possible chance.
Yet, decentralization is a murky subject. While Widmann agrees that decentralization is key to Google’s Web3 strategy, he recognizes that not everything should be the same.
Reasons For Google Cloud and The Bridge It Aims to Build
Widmann believes that if Google powers everything, he would be the quickest to admit it’s a problem. Even if they spent a lot of money constructing a DAO data center, he feared coordination problems would still occur.
People shouldn’t use blockchain to store everything permanently, Widmann said. He thinks decentralization doesn’t always work in the real world. There are circumstances when a decentralized, censorship-resistant truth database makes sense, but many don’t.
Google Cloud, he says, is chain-agnostic, so competing or complementary layer-one protocols across industries are possible. Widmann stressed that Google’s goals do not align with those of Avalanche. In contrast to Google, which he called “layer zero,” he called Avalanche “layer one” since it “runs on data centers, exactly like every other layer one.”
Widmann elaborates by saying that all layer-one protocols are computing containers often hosted on the cloud. From his perspective, cloud service providers are essential to the operation of initiatives like Avalanche since they supply the underlying computing container.