Google Coin May Stand Up Against Bitcoin

Added by Daris Abraham on January 26, 2014.
Saved under Daris Abraham, Opinion, Technology
Tags: google

A recent e-mail conversation between Google executives and a curious columnist had indicated the internet giant’s intention to include Bitcoin as a medium of payment for transactions. However, the truth might be far from this and Google may be already on the road to stand up against Bitcoin with its own Google Coin.
The news of Google-Bitcoin integration had created a lot of flutter in the tech circuit since Bitcoin getting attention from a prestigious company like Google would give it the required reputation boost. Google’s Senior VP of Ads and Commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy, had apparently confirmed through the e-mail that the company was in midst of a working strategy to integrate alternate payment solutions like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s disadvantages in its current form, however, makes it very difficult for Google to quickly align its service with the digital currency. Moreover, Google itself dealing with the currency transaction through its platform could result in multiple issues and even a possible litigation for the company through the still unreliable Bitcoin universe.
Customers and users of Bitcoin have been cribbing about the various usage issues involving Bitcoin including security and ease in interface for the transactions. Yet, there seems to be no let up in the ever-increasing popularity of the digital currency. It is clearly visible that Bitcoin has captured the imagination of many and can become a powerful element in the future.
Thus, Google is most likely to introduce a rival to Bitcoin with the introduction of a robust coin system capable of standing up against it. This will ensure that the company is able to serve the ever-increasing customer demand for an independent and universal digital currency transactions.
With Google’s extensive experience and research capabilities it can quickly encompass the issues that currently haunt the Bitcoin service and ensure availability of a seamless system for users across geographical locations:

• Google Drive for Google Coin Wallet 

The biggest concern of every Bitcoin user is the loss of Bitcoins to wallet file corruption from hard disk crashes or virus attacks. Any loss of Bitcoins from such data corruption is forever lost in the system and there are no available measures to claim the orphaned coins back.
Google Drive and the Google Wallet can essentially resolve this issue within no time as both services can hold data away from such mundane issues and keep Google Coins safe for its users. Google Coin millionaires and billionaires will feel far more secure with their hard-earned money.

• Traceable Transactions 

The serious adoption of digital currency has been plagued by bans in some countries like Thailand for its already reported use in buying drugs and in other illegal transactions. The lack of traceability of transactions by the authorities is a worrying concern which could find more countries pursuing a total ban in the future.
Google with its “One account, All of Google” service can effectively keep every transaction completely traceable. Illegal transactions once discovered can be mapped back to the suspects involved.

• Irreversible Payments

Lack of a central payment authority certainly undermines the possibility of resolution of any payment related errors that can occur for Bitcoin users. Non-reversible payments has continues to be an issue but Google with its Wallet service can quickly look into a possible solution of the same, possibly by setting up a central authority for regulation and addressing grievances.

• Escrow Services for Buyer Protection

Google Wallet can effectively be an escrow account service as well for all transactions that has a waiting period attached to it. Buyers can make the payment into the Google Wallet which can be later released once the seller delivers its promised service effectively.

• Ease of Use of Interface

Bitcoin interface remains confusing for almost all current users and new users are finding it extremely difficult to navigate through the services. This deficiency in ease of usage has been the reason behind the lack of wide-scale adoption of the digital currency.
Known for its dumbed down user-interface for all its platforms and services, Google is already a master of simplicity. Google Coin, thus, can be launched with an easy to use platform for better adopt-ability by all users concerned.
Bitcoin is at its very nascent stage of evolution and as more and more people discover its benefits, more chinks will definitely emerge. Google’s vast team present in the payments and Wallet section would definitely watching over and would be able to resolve these issues faster with its Google Coin services as against Bitcoin. Google for sure has the ability to stand up strong to rival Bitcoin and may even surpass its popularity with its own Google Coin service.
By Daris Abraham
Sources:
Wallstcheatsheet
Blackbambu
Stanford.edu
Yahoo
Telegraph

Google Lets Slip That It's Exploring Possible Bitcoin Integration Plans

Since Overstock.com OSTK -3.2% began accepting Bitcoin payments earlier this month, the cryptocurrency community has been buzzing with speculation about which tech company will integrate Bitcoin next.  So Jarar Malik decided to ask.

“After the whole Overstock thing, I said ‘f–k it,’” says Malik, a Bitcoin early adopter, online marketing manager and musician with a following in Pakistan. “‘Let me email the head guys at a bunch of tech companies and see what they say.’”

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He started with Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, asking if Apple AAPL -1.81% or Amazon had any plans for the cryptocurrency. No response. Then he tried the Google GOOG -3.1% triumvirate Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt. When they also ignored him, he moved down a rung to Google’s Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra.
To his surprise, Gundotra wrote him back. He also forwarded Malik’s query to another Google staffer and started a series of email exchanges that  led to one Googler telling Malik that the company is indeed pondering how it can make use of the world’s first form of decentralized digital cash.
“We are working in the payments team to figure out how to incorporate bitcoin into our plans,” wrote Google Senior VP of Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy at one point in the email exchange that Malik forwarded to me. He promised to get back in touch “when we are a little more sure.”
When Malik posted Ramaswamy’s response to the Bitcoin forum on Reddit and immediately got an positive response from the site’s bitcoiners, Google Wallet exec Ariel Bardin followed up by asking Malik to serve as a moderator on a Google survey posing the question “What would I want Google to do with Bitcoin?”
I reached out to Google, and the company responded in a very different tone, but didn’t deny that the comments Malik posted to Reddit were real. “As we continue to work on Google Wallet, we’re grateful for a very wide range of suggestions,” a spokesperson writes. ”While we’re keen to actively engage with Wallet users to help inform and shape the product, there’s no change to our position: we have no current plans regarding Bitcoin.”

The Forbes E-book On Bitcoin Secret Money: Living on Bitcoin in the Real World, by Forbes staff writer Kashmir Hill, can be bought in Bitcoin or legal tender.

Malik isn’t deterred. “They’re not dismissing it,” he says. “Maybe this will force their hand.”
Although it hasn’t adopted Bitcoin into any of its products, Google has been more Bitcoin-friendly than most other major tech firms. While Apple hasn’t allowed a single Bitcoin client into its iOS app store, dozens of Bitcoin wallets are available for Android. And in 2011, Eric Schmidt said at the Mobile World Congress that the company’s co-founders once considered introducing a Bitcoin-like virtual currency called Google Bucks, which he discouraged for regulatory reasons.
But some sort of Bitcoin integration could offer a boost to Google in its digital payments competition with Paypal. And Overstock.com illlustrated the buzz that Bitcoin adoption can generate earlier this month when it received $130,000 worth of Bitcoin sales in its first day accepting the currency, mostly from new customers.
Redditors certainly seemed wild about the idea. “I would love for google to make it possible to pay with bitcoin on most shops I come across,” wrote a user named Sturmhardt. “This is HUGE guys. I’ll move over to Google+ if this turns out to be true… ;-)” wrote a user named maxilllian.
As for Malik himself, he’s holding out hope that Google will make Bitcoin as ubiquitous and easy to use as Gmail. “Google is integrated in every part of our lives,” he says. “I’d like to see them let us send payments back and forth the same way we use email…to incorporate Bitcoin into our daily DNA.”
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Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a decentralized, anonymous electronic currency that first came into being in 2009. It's still not clear how far Bitcoin can go in establising itself in the mainstream economy, but there are quite a few large and small businesses accepting Bitcoin as a means to purchase goods and services. You can use the cryptocoin to buy produce at a farmers market, security services from major internet companies, as well as drugs and weapons from your favorite online black market. The list of Bitcoin vendors is growing every day.