Google Cloud has announced that it is working with Solana to bring Blockchain Node Engine to the Solana chain next year. If successful, this collaboration will make it easy for anyone to launch a dedicated Solana node in the cloud.
That comes one month after Google Cloud announced its collaboration with Coinbase.
Is Google turning friendly to crypto?
Google Cloud running a Solana Node
After Google Cloud announced the launch of a new dedicated Digital Assets Team in January 2022, they took a step further toward blockchain projects to help Web3 developers build and deploy new products on blockchain-based platforms. These steps have become increasingly visible with the revealing of the Blockchain Node Engine at the end of October.
The Blockchain Node Engine is a “fully-managed node hosting service for Web3 development” run by the provider, which already supports the Ethereum blockchain.
With Blockchain Node Engine, Web3 organizations can enjoy streamlined provisioning, secure development, and fully managed operations.
But all these things took more shape or built a pattern with the announcement related to the partnership with Solana.
According to the official Google Cloud Twitter account, the company has already started running a Solana validator.
“Google Cloud runs a block-producing Solana validator to participate in and validate the network.” the company tweeted.
Besides announcing the collaboration with Solana and bringing Blockchain Node Engine support to Solana, Google Cloud conveyed that they are indexing Solana data and adding it to its BigQuery data warehouse.
They will soon add features aimed at welcoming Solana developers and node runners. These features will be launched in the first quarter of 2023, said Google Web3 product manager Nalin Mittal at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Lisbon.
Solana’s native token (SOL) suddenly surged almost 15% in value on the cloud-services big announcement.
Why did Google Cloud join hands with Coinbase
The announcement of the partnership with Solana comes one month after Google Cloud announced another collaboration with Coinbase, one of the biggest secure online platforms for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrencies.
“Collaboration involves Coinbase building their global data platform on Google Cloud and Google Cloud leveraging Coinbase Commerce to enable crypto payments for its solutions,” said Google Cloud representatives in a press release.
Also, through Google’s partnership with Coinbase, Web3 developers can access Google’s BigQuery public cryptographic datasets, which Coinbase Cloud Nodes across leading blockchains will power. Thus, this partnership visibly brings a faster and more reliable way to access Web3-based systems, excluding the need for expensive and complex infrastructure.
This partnership might succeed in luring cutting-edge companies to Google in a fierce, fast-growing market where Google’s top competitors do not currently permit clients to pay with digital currencies.
Thus, if we are guided by all the headlines we have read in the last few weeks or days, both in the case of the partnership with Coinbase and the one with Solana, it would seem that Google is becoming more and more aggressive in its crypto approach. However, Google’s approach seems different from other giants that have taken a step towards Web3, such as Meta. Instead, Google seems to focus mainly on getting other companies in the industry to become customers for its services.
One thing is for sure; the fact that one of the biggest companies worldwide is becoming friendlier to cryptocurrencies and adopting them (one way or another) is indeed exciting crypto enthusiasts.