By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Google Cloud is growing its footprint in the Web3 ecosystem as it has inked a number of related partnerships with other protocols in the blockchain industry.
In its characteristic manner, Google Cloud, a division of American multinational tech giant, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has announced it is now a validator for the Solana blockchain protocol. As detailed by the tech giant, it will create a lot of growth opportunities for Solana-based protocols to scale and connect with the wider world.
Google Cloud announced the move on Saturday, adding that it will launch a Blockchain Node Engine for the Solana protocol by 2023. The company described the proposed node engine as a “fully-managed node hosting service” for the Solana blockchain.
“We want to make it one-click to run a Solana node in a cost-effective way,” said Google Web3 product manager Nalin Mittal at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Lisbon.
Google said its plans for the Solana blockchain are robust and that it will be actively participating in the network growth and affairs. The tech giant said it would have indexed all of Solana’s data by the end of the first quarter of 2023. It also confirmed that upon the complete indexing, it will add the data to its BigQuery Data Warehouse, a push that will “make it easier for the Solana developer ecosystem to access historical data.”
Part of the benefits startups in the Solana ecosystem will have is access to the Google credits program. Google Cloud announced that “select startups in the Solana ecosystem” will be able to apply for up to $100,000 in Cloud Credits.
The adoption of cloud-based services as the substrate for the development of a blockchain-based entity is growing at a very sporadic rate. While there are decentralized cloud alternatives, most exchanges and protocols still prefer the services from the centralized offering, as it is adjudged that they are more stable, secure, and functional at this time.
Google Cloud and Web3 Protocols
Google Cloud is growing its footprint in the Web3 ecosystem as it has inked a number of related partnerships with other protocols in the blockchain industry.
Prior to this time, Google Cloud has turned to the validator for the Near Protocol, Hedera, and Dapper Labs with related partnerships with Nansen, Blockdaemon, TRM, and Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) amongst others.
As a major leader in cloud services, the support from Google goes beyond its validator engines as the Web3 systems can enhance their operations by building on the infrastructures that the tech giant provides.
“Web3 companies and projects choose Google Cloud because it’s faster and easier to get things done. Reduce the need for infrastructure maintenance, custom tooling, and operations,” Google said in its description of the benefits the protocols building on it stands to gain.
The race among cloud service providers to woo blockchain protocols over is growing and Google Cloud competes with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure in becoming the dominant player for Web3 protocols. By partnering with Solana, Google Cloud shows it is one step ahead in its pursuit to achieve this milestone.