UPDATED 00:22 EDT / JANUARY 23 2014

NEWS

Google just might be exploring Bitcoin integration plans

As the de facto largest search engine and one of the juggernauts of Internet service innovation, when Google speaks everyone tends to listen. And for the Bitcoin community when Google execs and project even suggest the possibility of Google looking into Bitcoin it’s a very big thing. Thus, when Jarar Malik made a post on Reddit that he had been an in e-mail conversation with Google staffers about Bitcoin plans, it brought a great deal of positive reaction.

In order to provide proof and verification for his claims, Malik even forwarded the e-mail conversation to Andy Greenberg at Forbes. First Malik sent an e-mail to Google staffer Vic Gundotra, which quickly got cc:ed to Google Senior VP of Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy and that’s when mentions of “incorporating bitcoin” into Google’s plans got mentioned.

“We are working in the payments team to figure out how to incorporate bitcoin into our plans,” wrote Ramaswamy at one point in an e-mail exchange.

Google’s official response hasn’t been tremendous but the news is still very good

To follow up, Greenberg went to other portions of Google’s PR machine to see if there were indeed plans for Bitcoin inside the Internet titan. The response he got was a bit more tepid and less exciting than the one that Malik had found during his exchange.

“As we continue to work on Google Wallet, we’re grateful for a very wide range of suggestions,” a spokesperson wrote back to Greenberg. ”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.”

However, Malik has framed this as Google not dismissing it the idea entirely.

As a direct result of his interaction, Malik says that Ariel Bardin, Vice President of Payments at Google, asked him to facilitate a Google Moderator by posting a question: “What would I want Google to do with Bitcoin?

I was asked by Ariel Bardin, VP Google Payments to pose this question. Please be thoughtful, creative, and propose features/products that you would like to see Google do with bitcoin. Ariel has assured me that he will personally review the results and make sure the team sees it.

The question has already received 525 suggestions and 18,775 votes from 1,461 people.

In fact, it does make sense for the company to embrace Bitcoin in one way or another (either via Wallet or from a different project) and Google has a vast, broad history of linking into innovative tech or attempting to push boundaries themselves. If Google does come forward with plans to integrate Bitcoin, it will be a huge coup d’état for the cryptocurrency to say the least.

With Overstock picking up the digital currency using Coinbase it has provided a significant windfall for both the Bitcoin community and the retail company. Google’s involvement could provide even more popularity for the cryptocurrency and legitimacy for it as a form of Internet payment.


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