The past 12-24 months have ushered a new way of innovation across the cryptoeconomy. We’re seeing more VC money, talent and media hype jumping on the bandwagon. Everyone from work colleagues with a passing interest, to my barber, have heard of ‘the blockchain’ or under the new guise of ‘web3’.

So, it only makes sense that the cloud platform companies want in on the act.

On Thursday, Google Cloud announced it’s launching Blockchain Node Engine - we’ll dig into why this is important, what this means for the future and more.

Let’s dive in!

Google, the Blockchain Company

• What is Google known for

• What is Google Cloud all about

• Why are they getting involved in this space / area

• Why do nodes need to be managed

• Benefits

• What’s next

What’s Google Known For?

It’s pretty bold of me to call Google a ‘Blockchain Company’ - and that’s probably stretching it a little far.

I mean, we know Google as a ‘Search Company’, right? Or, an Advertising Company, at most?

Before we talk more about this, let’s talk about Amazon.

Amazon started off just selling books - we know that didn’t last long as it expanded it’s range swiftly.

In the Mid-2000’s, it was bringing enough web traffic that it needed more servers to handle the traffic load. However, most people used Amazon even more during certain times of the year (e.g. Christmas, Thanksgiving etc), which meant there were some months where they didn’t this additional server capacity.

In 2006, they decided to launch Amazon Web Services (AWS), as a side business for Amazon.com.

Currently, AWS has a $79bn run rate. Not bad for a side hustle to make money off existing assets.

In a similar scenario, Google also has additional server space to deal with larger load periods. This is where Google Cloud comes in - a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for Search, Gmail, Google Drive and YouTube.

Introducing….Google Cloud Blockchain Node Engine

So back to the announcement.

You can read the official announcement here, or I can just summarize it for ya.

Alphabet wants a piece of the Blockchain action - they see the companies, talent and VC dollars investing in blockchain startups and know that many of these companies leveraging blockchain technology are going to need to manage their own ‘nodes’.

A ‘node’ is a device (e.g. a computer, mobile phone or server) that, in this case, contains a fully copy of transactions carried out on a blockchain. Nodes talk to each other to make sure they all have the latest version of the blockchain data.

Nodes are pretty important - the more nodes a network has, the more decentralized, scalable and secure it can become (because there are more failure points, compared to one server in my basement that holds ALL my info).

This is pretty data and resource intensive.

Google Cloud wants to offer a service to handle the whole thing for you - node creation, a secure development environment and more - they want to do the heavy lifting and let developers focus on building their web3 app.

Why are they getting involved?

Easy - they want a piece of the action.

Cloud Computing is one of the fastest growing industries - anything with a 17% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) sounds pretty good to me.

Benefits to Google Cloud:

• Capturing demand for web3 frenzy as developers hunt for gold

• Staying on the pulse of web3 development

• Solving an existing challenge in a nascent industry (everybody needs server/node space…)

Benefits to developers:

• Self-managed nodes are a hassle, this removes that obstacle from dev teams

• Benefit from the knowledge and expertise from Google Cloud for improved reliability, performance and security (e.g. Google Cloud Armor to prevent denial-of-service (DDos) attacks that spam and slow down networks

• Stay focused on building product, not hiring dedicated teams to maintain and monitor nodes

My Take:

This was a no-brainer for Google Cloud.

By focusing on the most widely-used blockchain (Ethereum to start), they’ll attract pent-up demand with ease.

Also, there’s a TON of potential to expan into new areas/developer use cases e.g. smart contract development, reading and writing from the blockchain etc.

With the announcement earlier last month about Google Cloud partnering with Coinbase Global to integrate crypto payment systems into their cloud services, they’re playing to their strengths as a cloud provider to assert their dominance early in the web3 battle for mindshare.

The one thing they need to watch out for is - if everything is running on Google, is it really decentralized?

🔗 Links Of The Week

🧙🏼 23 year old Evan Spiegel’s Leaked Email

I love reading leaked emails like these - good writing shows clarity of thought, and Evan Spiegel (Co-Founder & CEO at Snap) has it in spades. This showed a relentless focus on building a business (achieving profitability) and building great consumer products - worth a read.

🏆 How Elon Wins

A stab at what Twitter would be like if repositioned as an ‘algorithmic marketplace’ (basically allow companies to customize a type of feed they want to release for users). Can’t see it happening becuase it’s too big of a shift, but good to exercise the mind.

📊 The End of Excel?

The unbundling of Excel is happening before us - I’m a fan of tools like Notion, Coda and others, but I can’t see Excel leaving us behind for a long time.

Until next time

I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition - I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two.

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Fahim