Details about the Google ICO (April Fools)
Warning: This article was part of an Aprils Fool Joke!
For a long time Google has kept a low profile when it came to blockchain and cryptocurrencies. While competitors such as Microsoft or IBM started initiatives in the emerging distributed ledger sector early on, it seemed as if the search engine giant would completely miss this trend. It was only a few weeks ago that Google announced that it would no longer allow advertising for cryptocurrencies on its own advertising platforms (Adwords, Youtube & Co). The reason for this should now be clear, because as the parent company ‘Alphabet’ announced in a press release they have been working on a new blockchain solution. Today it was announced that Google will launch this blockchain with an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for a brand new cryptocurrency!
In an interview with a software engineer involved in the project we have been enlightened:
“One of the pillars of Google’s philosophy has always been to develop technology that can positively influence the lives of ALL people. After carefully monitoring the blockchain industry over the years, we have come to the conclusion that currently available blockchains are not scalable enough.
A year ago, our software architects had the brilliant idea for the breakthrough:
Our blockchain has neither blocks nor a chain and instead of nodes that are distributed around the world our transaction history (‘ledger’,) is stored on our data centers, which are also distributed all over the world! An SQL database is used as the data structure. Brilliant.”
We have summed up all further details on this surprising turn of events here:
- Airdrop: Half of all the tokens will be distributed free of charge to all users who sign away their privacy and data protection rights to Google for life.
- The cryptocurrency will be called Googol (ticker symbol ‘GG’) and there will be 10100 tokens initially.
- If Googol succeeds and global demand is not met, Google reserves the right (e.g. at the request of the central banks or in the event of financial crisis) to issue new Googols.
- In order to comply with the KYC/AML norms, each wallet is linked to a Google account, a clear name and a mobile phone number.
- Artificial intelligence is expected to detect transactions with a suspicious background, so that certain Googols (also at the request of the FBI, CIA & Co.) can be invalidated.
- Since Google knows at all times who owns how many googols and which transactions are valid, the energy-hungry proof-of-work consensus procedure with “miners” (like Bitcoin) is no longer necessary.
Even if the design decisions made by Google sound reasonable, we are not convinced that Googol can succeed. The competition is not sleeping and some people say that PayPal, Visa & Co offer a similar service…
Here is the registration link for the Google ICO