Google Cloud Hiring Blockchain Specialists in Bid to ‘Drive Decentralization’ Efforts

Google Cloud’s Digital Assets Team will provide dedicated node hosting for developers and take part in validation, among other services

article-image

Google Cloud sign. Silicon Valley, USA. Credit: Shutterstock

share
  • Google’s cloud division has formed a new business unit that will seek to support its new and existing customers developing on the blockchain
  • The Digital Asset Team will provide dedicated node hosting for developers through to on-chain governance

Google’s cloud computing division is hunting down blockchain experts as part of a new business unit aimed at supporting the tech giant’s existing customers.

The unit, known as the Digital Assets Team, will focus on the retail and healthcare sectors as Google attempts to expand its offerings beyond advertising.

“We’re seeing [interest in the blockchain space] across every industry vertical we interact with — from financial services and capital markets to retail, sports and gaming,” Richard Widmann, Google Cloud’s head of strategy for digital assets, told Blockworks.

”Digital asset and blockchains technology is already having a profound impact on our customers and their users across nearly every major vertical, and perhaps most prominently in the financial services space,” he said. 

Decentralization is a major component of the crypto-industry. Decentralized finance, or DeFi, has sprung up in recent years based on the philosophy of cutting out the middleman, including banks and lenders, to transact peer-to-peer via the use of smart contracts. Google is hoping to capitalize on the movement as finance continues to evolve.

”We see the evolution of blockchain technology and decentralized networks today as analogous to the rise of open source and the internet 10-15 years ago,” Widmann said.

The new unit will support customers seeking to build, transact, store value and deploy new products via blockchain-based platforms, said Yolande Piazza, vice president of financial services at Google Cloud in a blog post on Thursday.

“This new team will enable our customers to accelerate their efforts in this emerging space and help underpin the blockchain ecosystems of tomorrow,” said Piazza.

Specifically, Google Cloud’s Digital Assets Team will provide dedicated node hosting for developers, take part in node validation and on-chain governance and support on-chain governance via participation from Google Cloud executives and senior engineers, per the post.

The team will also help drive co-development and integrations into Google’s partner ecosystem as well as advancing go-to-market initiatives with its ecosystem partners in the hope that Google Cloud becomes “the connective tissue between traditional enterprise and blockchain technologies.”

Several large blockchain and crypto companies utilize Google’s Cloud Platform including HederaTheta Labs, and Dapper Labs which recently signed on in a bid to leverage the tech giant’s “performance, reliability and security.”

This story was updated on Jan. 28, 2022, at 2:25 pm ET to include commentary from Google.

Additional reporting by Casey Wagner


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (11).png

Research

Union’s technical design brings measured improvements to crosschain interoperability. By combining a consensus-verified hub with novel constructs like state lenses and ZK proofs for client updates, Union achieves an interoperability protocol that is highly performant, trust-minimized, and scalable.

article-image

Camp is looking to onboard licensors and creators to monetize their content for AI agents

article-image

The US regulator will use Nasdaq’s system to detect manipulation across derivatives and prediction markets

by Blockworks /
article-image

SOL and HYPE have rebounded, dYdX course corrects (again)

article-image

Over 100 crypto firms and advocates urge Congress to shield open-source builders and non-custodial providers

by Blockworks /
article-image

The probabilities app is finding mainstream success

article-image

A stock by any other name — even “token” — is still a security