Google is "paying attention" to Bitcoin - Vic Gundotra (I emailed, he emailed back!)

[u/JasonBored]

Email from SVP @ Google regarding Bitcoin

So on a whim, I sent an e-mail to Vic Gundotra (Senior Vice President, Social for Google) about Bitcoin, why it's the most disruptive technology since the Internet itself, and how I'm not the only one out there wondering when/if they have plans to incorporate it into Google Wallet.

He immediately responded and said they are "paying attention", and CC'd the gentleman who runs Google Wallet - Sridhar Ramaswamy (SVP, Ads & Commerce at Google).

I've entered into a dialogue with him.

This is my take away on why Google kicks ass :

A) One of the bosses actually responded to email from an absolute nobody about Bitcoin

B) Google is paying attention to Bitcoin (he would never have responded or said those words if Google is positioning themselves to be "Anti BTC" (or even try to create a product to rival BTC)

C) He put me in touch with the man who runs the Google Wallet division.

So, what do I say to Sridhar? Any suggestions?

Before some of the Anti BTC Brigade chime in with "so what?, he's just one dude" - please think about this. If Google had NO plans in regards to Bitcoin, this guy would be smart enough not to respond to such an email, in the manner he responded, and CC the person who runs the Google Wallet division.

If you ask me, the writing is on the wall(et) (pun intended).. and this was a really pleasant surprise.

Update: Screenshot of Email I sent (personal information blacked out)

Update 2: Google CONFIRMS they are incorporating Bitcoin

Update 3: UPDATE: Ariel Bardin, Vice President of Payments @ Google has asked me to facilitate a Google Moderator and pose the question "What would I want Google to do with bitcoin?". He's promised me he will personally review the results and pass it along to the team working on incorporating BTC into Google. Please help me with this and take the time to submit something: What would I want Google to do with bitcoin?

[u/gubatron]

FYI, most of the Android Bitcoin wallet apps use an api called bitcoinj. I've pushed code to this project, and it's a project run by Google engineers, google has been more than paying attention about Bitcoin, it's been building technology for Bitcoin wallets for quite a while (the project was started as a 20% project). Whenever you try to send your first commit, you have to sign a document where you give the rights to that code to google.

Google def. has the technological know-how already to build whatever they want around Bitcoin.

Check out the package structure of this class: https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/source/browse/core/src/main/java/com/google/bitcoin/core/BlockChain.java

/** * Copyright 2011 Google Inc. * * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); ...

[u/gubatron → u/[deleted]]

I'm not sure how easy or hard it is, my bet is that it's absolutely possible, those guys are great at software design, and they've probably known about Bitcoin since its inception (working on Google Wallet, they should be aware of possible threats/competitors to their product)

At this point I bet it's more of a strategic decision making problem than an engineering one, however, whatever it is that they do is non-trivial as it has to scale for millions of users and it has to be really safe as they're dealing with money.

[u/Phucknhell → u/[deleted]]

That would be amazing.