Bitcoin Forum

Google CEO shows interest to bitcoin:
http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#688
Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
"I think we should study this quite a bit more so we generally understand it..."

That's Google-se for "Get out of my office before I call security"

Sounds like they JA is tossing ideas around very similar to namecoin ... and something like Ricardian contracts (Open Transactions) for important censorship resistant documents.

I thought this bit was salient also and should be stashed in memory for later use


... right here is all the reason you need to get into bitcoin.

this transcript is from 2011.

Since then Eric Schmidt already has said he was aware of Bitcoin on some occasions. But indeed maybe JA was the first one to introduce it to him.

i think google can introduce a totally new coin, G-coin  :P

Schmidt is the guy who wants to make personal ownership of drones illegal.

Authoritarian from the word go.

Google + Bitcoin is not a good fit.  Western Union makes sense - even Amazon.  But not Google.

Schmidt: "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

and

“The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.”

so google will dominate btc also now? :)

This is from 2011, not sure if they will do something in the near future because bitcoin future is getting more promising.

Ex Googler: Things like this do interest Google, infact bitcoin is exactly up their street. Anything that uses technology for 'the greater good' is a primary target. They will have a small team watching and waiting.

i'm sure Mike Hearns introduced Bitcoin to Schmidt long ago.

talk to me about this more.  RSA is still used by banks and other online stores so how could it be that porous?

This sounds awesome, I wouldn't mind getting paid by adsense in Bitcoin, no more waiting on Paychecks.

I think google enjoys being a powerful company.

The thing about America, is if anyone threatens the USD, we invade. Google is a company, all they have to do is arrest, and seize.

It would be foolish if they made a g-coin.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_internet/index.htm

It's not illegal now. Let's see Google try to make a rival to Bitcoin, and then eventually end up mining Bitcoin.

Coblee (Google employee I think) already made Litecoin.

If google were ballsy enough to make a bitcoin mimic, that would be the end of bitcoin. Googles reach is far, bitcoins is small. Does anyone have an estimated on how many active bitcoiners there are? 1 million, 2 million? Google has an audience of what 1 billion, 2 billion? And they could easily incorporate into google checkout, with the funds to not have to stress if someone trades a $40,000,000 house.

Shhhhh... don't give them ideas! It is not just Google, even Facebook, Twitter and and all sorts of other sites could pull the rug under Bitcoin's feet if they decided to utilize their user base. The coins would def be different in terms of the technicalities, they certainly would not require mining. I think the only plus(for us) is that most big companies would probably be to stubborn and would make the coins centralized around there own branch of companies similar to how gift cards work. An advantage for "them" would be that the system would turn a few blind eyes when it comes to regulations, we all know the law loves to fall on side of the big guy.

If Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo all tried to start their own cryptos, they would all try to 51% attack each other. Nah, better they mine Bitcoins. If any of them tries to 51% attack Bitcoin, the others would defend Bitcoin to make sure they don't profit unfairly. They would each start their own Bitcoin mining pools for their customers. Competitive capitalism at its finest.

my impression is, that all of those big players watch bitcoin closely. but all of them also know that it is foolish to move too soon and just wait and see. bitcoin is still too small for anything serious.

I guess, the thing is when Facebook was nothing serious people could have seriously competed, providing they had the foresight to do so. Now that Facebook are serious it is to late, even Google struggle to compete with Facebook in that social realm. The big companies do not necessarily need to compete under an existing brand, they could simply use existing infrastructure and create a new brand/company. If successful simply merge the companies into a "partnership".

I bet they found out about bitcoin on Google... Hah...

Why is personal ownership of drones good?

Wrong question.

Why is it bad?

RSA relies on hard large primes and factoring but over time computing power can break certain version of RSA which aren't hard enough. That being said PGP is safe and RSA is safe because if it's 4096bit it's not going to be cracked.

Well that settles it but Litecoin and any other coin isn't a rival to Bitcoin but an alternative. Competition is good. IE was a rival to Netscape, and Opera a rival to them both and Webkit a rival to them all etc.

Open and transparent is what Google wants. This wouldn't be a problem if we didn't live in a world of corrupt authority, corrupt cops, frame jobs, set ups etc. Julian Assange being accused of rape and it's open so even if he's innocent his reputation is ruined?

Transparency helps and hurts depending on who is in law enforcement.

Julian Assange's own story of what happened in those two night isn't open. There also various other information about the issue that isn't open.

Facebook actually has it's own coins. The same goes for Amazon.
I don't think Google would design a crypto-currency in a way that it can be effectively 51% attacked.

If you are Google and actually can sign things with Google certificates, why rely only on proof-of-work for trust?