The list of tech giants jumping on the blockchain bandwagon is lengthening on a daily basis and not a day seems to go by without an announcement involving a major company and a new blockchain project.
This week it’s Google’s turn as the internet giant revealed its new cloud and blockchain partners.
The tech giant has just announced two partnerships that will enable it to offer the financial services industry a cloud platform to develop and run blockchain-based applications. In a blog post leading up to Google’s Cloud Next ’18 Conference, the tech giant unveiled new software that will integrate with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
“Customers can now explore ways they might use distributed ledger technology (DLT) frameworks on GCP with launch partners including Digital Asset and BlockApps,” announced Google, “and try open-source integrations for Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum later this year in our GCP Marketplace.”
New York-based BlockApps is a service platform upon which organizations can develop blockchain-based apps. The firm made its own announcement about the partnership and its own blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) solution.
“Google’s entrance into the blockchain space is a landmark event for the growing blockchain ecosystem and cements the continued investment in blockchain solutions for Enterprises,” said BlockApps. “As GCP adoption grows, the developer-friendly BlockApps STRATO platform enables more enterprises the ability to test and implement blockchain application solutions across any business sector.”
Digital Asset, a provider of distributed ledger technology (DLT) software for the financial services industry, is also from New York. Blythe Masters, the company’s CEO, said: “This will reduce the technical barriers to DLT application development by delivering our advanced distributed ledger platform and modeling language to Google Cloud.”
The firm also has a developer program which enables its technology partners and software vendors to access the software development kit to its smart contract, Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML), coding language. Google has now joined the program and is reportedly working on its own blockchain technology to enable third parties to post and verify transactions.
Google has reportedly been the second largest investor in blockchain tech over the past five years. Only Japan’s SBI Asia, that provides a “next-generation payment platform,” has invested more in the emerging industry, with American internet retailer Overstock.com coming in at third place. Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Alibaba and IBM are all also actively pursuing blockchain technology to further their dominance in the marketplace.
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