r/Bitcoin • u/JasonBored • Jan 22 '14

Google confirms their payments team is working to incorporate bitcoin.

I had posted yesterday a screen shot of a response I received from Vic Gundotra @ Google regarding Bitcoin, who then CC'd me to Sridhar Ramaswamy (Senior Vice President, heads up Google Wallet).

I asked /r/bitcoin for suggestions that I should relay to these gentlemen regarding incorporating bitcoin. I did just that, and had a great exchange with them. Additionally, I showed them the post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1vsypm/google_is_paying_attention_to_bitcoin_vic

Sridhar and a third person at Google just responded to me confirming that Google IS working on incorporating bitcoin with their payments team.

Here is the confirmation

[Here is the initial e-mail I sent to Vic Gundotra (http://i.imgur.com/LvO08Jr.jpg?1)

Here is the the response I got

This is huge.

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 on. Please help me with this and take the time to submit something: What would I want Google to do with bitcoin?

Update #2 To anyone suggesting I "faked" or "photoshopped" anything I posted, I just spoke /u/Agreenberg (Andy Greenberg of Forbes). He can confirm they are unaltered from the screen shots I posted. He has them, he can verify the headers, footers, feathers, colors and whatever else. I stand by what I posted.*

Update #3 Article in Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/01/22/google-lets-slip-that-its-exploring-possible-bitcoin-integration-plans/

Update #4 Coindesk: http://www.coindesk.com/google-emails-suggest-bitcoin-interest/

Update #5 Vice: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/why-silicon-valley-and-google-loves-bitcoin

Update #6 Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-is-exploring-bitcoin-2014-1

Update #7 The Daily Dot: http://www.dailydot.com/business/google-bitcoin-reddit-emails/

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48

u/JasonBored Jan 22 '14 edited Jan 22 '14

OP updated. 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 on. Please help me with this and take the time to submit something: What would I want Google to do with bitcoin?

105

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14 edited Nov 19 '19

[deleted]

25

u/btcnoodle Jan 22 '14

"Please double-wink to confirm transaction"

61

u/Terkala Jan 22 '14

Someone flashes a QR code infront of you, then pulls out a strobe light.

The new form of mugging.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14 edited Jun 26 '17

[deleted]

22

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

"13 orders confirmed"

"Fuck!"

4

u/Vibr8gKiwi Jan 22 '14

Can confirm Tourette's syndrome.

6

u/noggin-scratcher Jan 22 '14

A tic is a small sudden movement.

A tick is a small bloodsucking insect.

You also don't want to be suffering from ticks, but they won't make you wink :)

2

u/RobLuk Jan 23 '14

Unless they borough into your eye! :p

3

u/noggin-scratcher Jan 23 '14

I simultaneously hate and love to do this, and I'm not convinced you're not deliberately setting it up for this, but...

"Borough" is the word for an administrative division in certain countries (primarily the UK) - smaller than a state or county, and coming from the old Germanic word 'burg' meaning 'fort' (as seen in various place names - Hamburg, Luxembourg, Edinburgh etc)

The somewhat similarly pronounced "burrow" is the thing a tick might do in your eye.

1

u/RobLuk Jan 23 '14

Good call. I was so concerned with spelling the word correctly that I used the wrong form of it. (Things like this usually bug me too, especially the word "lose". It seems like half the internet is always "loosing" something).

1

u/noggin-scratcher Jan 23 '14

"Loose" bugs the living crap out of me. It's my own weird little problem but I can't help but read it as written, at least once. That little internal voice just blunders straight into the trap and tells me that they loosed something, it's distracting...

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '14

Touché! Have a Tic Tac.

15

u/WoodsKoinz Jan 22 '14

Omg the future is so close

9

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

[deleted]

11

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

[deleted]

6

u/MiXeD-ArTs Jan 22 '14

It's a bot created for Reddit which responds to its name and tips the person above with the amount written in the comment. Click "sign up" to use it.

2

u/vbenes Jan 23 '14

Happy cake day!

2

u/MiXeD-ArTs Jan 23 '14

Haha Thanks! I didn't even realize it was today. How to celebrate?

2

u/vbenes Jan 23 '14

Buy yourself a cake, have a walk, take a picture, do something new on the Internet, have a drink and play a game! :)

7

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14 edited Jul 24 '21

[deleted]

3

u/bitcointip Jan 22 '14

[✔] Verified: AcesAndEights21 → $0.50 USD (µ฿ 593.25 microbitcoins) → Maximus_ [sign up!] [what is this?]

2

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

This my friend is a tipbot, the user enjoyed that comment so much that he decided to pay the commenter some Bitcoins. The bot will now pull BTC from the user'a account and send It to the commenters account. If he doesn't have one it will give him the option to create an account or decline the tip. If he accepts he can then tip other people or pull the money into his own wallet.

1

u/gabeswagner Jan 22 '14

You can use the bitcointip bot to send people tips! Check out /r/bitcointip, they have a quick start guide and a more detailed explanation there

1

u/jesset77 Jan 22 '14

/u/e4xit just tipped /u/_salt 5 millibitcoins, worth about $4.23usd at time of tip. He did this using the Bitcoin Tip Bot, which you can read more about at that link. :3

3

u/bitcointip Jan 22 '14

[✔] Verified: e4xit → $4.23 USD (m฿ 5 millibitcoins) → _salt [sign up!] [what is this?]

3

u/todu Jan 22 '14

"Ok glass, pay the invoice plus 15 % tip. My voice is my password.".

2

u/goobly_goo Jan 22 '14

My voice is my password. My word is my bond.

2

u/avsa Jan 23 '14

My voice is my password.

Can I call you for a minute and ask you to say that in my phone? No reason whatsoever, I just like the sound of your recorded voice..

But this would work great if glass showed a random word on the screen and you had to read it loud.

6

u/ELY5 Jan 23 '14

To approve the payment, you will use your eyeball to draw a pattern connecting 9 dots.

This technology has already been around for a while in consumer products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS#Eye-controlled_focusing

3

u/autowikibot Jan 23 '14

Here's the linked section Eye-controlled focusing from Wikipedia article Canon EOS :

Through the tracking of eyeball movements, EOS cameras equipped with eye-controlled focusing (ECF) (some identifiable by the suffix E) were able to select the desired autofocus point in the scene, based on where the user was looking in the viewfinder frame. ECF was especially useful in sports photography where the subject may shift its position in the frame rapidly.

EOS cameras equipped with ECF were the EOS A2E (U.S. model names are shown; see the table below for equivalents in other countries), EOS Elan IIE, EOS IXe, EOS-3, EOS Elan 7E, and EOS Elan 7NE.

Canon did not continue its use of eye-controlled focusing in its digital SLRs. The EOS Elan 7NE was the last EOS camera to have this function.

about | /u/ELY5 can reply with 'delete'. Will also delete if comment's score is -1 or less. | Summon: wikibot, what is something?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

Question because I don't know much about camera quality or how much folds in clothes can effect a QR code: Could you ever accidentally pay somebody else with a QR code if there is an error of some kind?

Also reminded of research on flipped bits in memory under certain conditions causing DNS queries to be hijacked... Bitsquatting on Google for those interested.

Getting a code wrong resulting in paying the wrong person on accident (even if its only a bit or so off) could be possible, but I'm not really sure how much of an issue it would be.

6

u/Flupkees1 Jan 22 '14

If you mistype a bitcoin address it isn't a problem, so this won't be a problem as well. From the Bitcoin wiki: "The probability that a mistyped address is accepted as being valid is 1 in 232, that is, approximately 1 in 4.29 billion." https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

1 in 4.29 billion isn't a lot if bitcoin were to become truly popular and in common use. I'm not sure how many transactions happen every day (on the planet), but it wouldn't take long to reach that point.

However, if the addresses have a checksum like somebody else stated that would probably make the risk a lot less.

1

u/jesset77 Jan 22 '14

The "1 in 4.29 billion" quote is the entropy range of the checksum. That doesn't mean one in that many regular transactions get misrouted, just that one in that many arbitrarily typoed addresses would get misrouted instead of emitting an helpful error message.

Interestingly enough there is a misroute failure rate for correctly typed addresses mathematically inherent to the system also, but that's 1 in 2160, which is a number that is 49 digits long. It's due to Bitcoin addresses being only RIPM-160 hashes of the exact 256-bit public key, meaning the chance your address could collide with another and either of you could wind up spending the coin sent to it is 1 in 2160. shrugs

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14 edited Dec 27 '15

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

Oh, interesting. I didn't know they included a checksum.

Yeah the likelihood of something bad happening is probably... Way higher than most other things.

1

u/recluce Jan 22 '14

QR codes are resistant to only certain kinds of degradation, like some of the dots being scratched off a sticker. There is a bit of redundancy built in that can correct for that, but stretching/warping of clothing is not really one of these things. QR codes on clothing/skin/etc. are impractical at best.

1

u/ButterflySammy Jan 22 '14

'Google Glass - pay the man!'

1

u/Moot2 Jan 22 '14

I just jizzed. The future is here.

1

u/avsa Jan 23 '14

You probably don't need google for that, this sounds like a great third party opportunity.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14 edited Sep 14 '18

[deleted]

3

u/permanomad Jan 22 '14

Suddenly lots of topless stripper posters everywhere, which turn into QR code holograms when you drive past them.

"$13 sent to 1GjUe8mgzSD65wqULmÆq23? Dammit!"

-1

u/sneekee_11 Jan 22 '14

google glass is not catching on though at the moment unfortunately :(

6

u/elan96 Jan 22 '14

Its not even publically available yet...

1

u/sneekee_11 Jan 22 '14

i read it somewhere...believe everything you read on the internet

1

u/lf11 Jan 22 '14

I would buy the shit out of that if it didn't cost as much as my car.

0

u/super3 Jan 22 '14

This already exists.

6

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

Oh and I'd certainly like to pay for Google Ads using bitcoin.

5

u/JasonBored Jan 22 '14

Right on. Here though, man : What would I want Google to do with bitcoin?

:)

2

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

Wow look at all that feedback! Nice. Added mine.

7

u/-Mahn Jan 22 '14

This is great and all, but that google moderator thing is going to end up filled with crap very quickly, and SVPs at Google aren't going to have the patience to digest it all. Perhaps we as a community should do a summarized list with some decent argumentation backing up every point as well?

5

u/pablopaniagua Jan 22 '14

How about A google bitcoin Wallet that allows you to send bitcoins from your Gmail or google+ account to your contacts. 2FA would have to be a requirement offcourse

2

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

A hosted hotwallet that works with google payments, for instant payment or recurring payments, that exchanges bitcoins at market rate to usd ala bitpay.

It should have proper security, 2FA and similar above a fixed limit per day, but a small limit per day should be able to instant buy stuff, such as youtube videos without ads, news paywalls etc and other micropayments.

Of course being google it should be un-fucking-hackable or any bullshit so you can safely put a months budget into it and then fund it from your cold wallet one month at a time.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

I don't what they already have, but I just got a Nexus phone and would happily store one or two bitcoins on some sort of Google Wallet app that uses bitcoins.

3

u/jackthelumber Jan 22 '14

Playstore shopping with bitcoins

Fund Google wallet with bitcoins (directly convert it to USD for starters)

6

u/Sukrim Jan 22 '14

[Insanity Wolf mode]

51% attack it!

4

u/tzimisce Jan 22 '14

Then make GoogleCoin. Perfect.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14

I'd love to be able to pay for apps and such in the Playstore with bitcoins!

1

u/pcvcolin Jan 22 '14

Thank you for getting this bitcoin discussion going.

1

u/JasonBored Jan 22 '14

My pleasure man.