Google Cloud Exec on Future of Web3: We're 'Committed to the Space'

Google Cloud and on finality are collaborating with the aim to help web three developers build and scale decentralized applications on the Polka dot network. Joining us now is Google Cloud Global head of Web three strategy James Trumans. Welcome to the show, James. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Nice to see you again. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for joining us. Uh This was announced at token 2049 talk to us about the journey here. Yeah, so obviously um on finality working with respect to the Polka dot ecosystem, um many power chains uh there that are involved and they are making it a lot easier for folks to spin those up leveraging GC P's infrastructure to do so. So if you think about it, they're an infrastructure provider building on top of Google cloud platform. And this is a way to help their developers and their ecosystem better not have to think about some of the underlying infrastructure considerations and help them get started a lot quicker so that they can focus on the, the development and the value that they bring uh beyond just running notes. So I have to ask this because this comes up quite often. Uh you know, uh you see press releases all the time, uh saying that somebody is partnering with Google and it looks to be more of a vendor ven D relationship with Google being the, the vendor uh for the infrastructure, you know, the cloud, et cetera. What, how do you distinguish between a, a commercial relationship like that? A vendor ven D relationship and a partnership? Because it just seems that every week there's somebody saying that they're partners with Google and it boosts up their, their Cryptocurrency and it seems almost like a, a form of uh price manipulation if you will, how do you distinguish between somebody that's using you guys as a, as a, you know, your services versus somebody that's an actual partner? Sure. Well, I think, um certainly, uh it's definitely not a form of, of that, but at the same time, I understand the question. So to be really clear, Google Cloud is one of the few hyper scale as if not the only one that has a business development, which is to, to what you're talking about, but also product and engineering capability in this space. So when we talk to our partners, our customers folks that are building on GCP, it is usually not just a conversation around. Can you build on Google Cloud and let's do a press release. It's more about, can we understand the technology that you're developing? Do we have Google engineers that are also building or interested in building around the same ecosystem and what are the first party products and capabilities that we can ultimately bring to market if not now, but in the future. And so as a, as a provider of open source, um and a company that's very engineering led, we do tend to focus on that, go to market business development capability alongside our first party product and engineering capability. And so many of our announcements um either start with product engineering or, or maybe get to it later on depending on how fast we can move. And I do think that differentiates Google Cloud from, from our competitors in terms of what we're about and how we build empathy with our customers. Yet I always see those press releases are, they don't necessarily generate from Google, they, they generate from the, the project itself. I mean, it, you know, iiiiii, I guess the question is like what kind of control or what, what sort of, you know, how, how can the average person who's looking at this? Say, OK, this is a legitimate partnership versus this is a vendor ven D relationship. Yeah, I mean, so, so you, you, I think you said the word controller, I mean, we're not looking for um control in, in this ecosystem. I think our, our role is to be an enabler. Um So if you're a reader um looking for for what's real and what's not I mean, you should absolutely make sure you're reading the content carefully. You should be evaluating it for yourself and looking into the details of it and of course, some things are on our surfaces. Uh some, some content is produced on, on other surfaces. But for the most part, if we're quoted in an article, um, it's because we're, we're involved and we're engaged and we're, we're happy to be there and, and very excited with the work that's going on and um that's the best way. But do you tell your customers? Hey, guys, listen, you know, we're just selling you some, some cloud space here. This isn't, you know, we, we might call it a partnership, but it's not really a partnership where like, like it just doesn't seem to be uh well filtered and, and it, it does cause confusion, doesn't it? Uh Well, I'm not confused but um yeah, for folks that we see price spikes whenever it happens and it doesn't. Well, ok, let's, let's talk about the Polka dot Network here. Why specifically the Polka dot Polka dot network for this launch? What was so interesting about it and what are web three developers looking for when it comes to that specific ecosystem? Well, on finality, focus specifically on the Polka dot ecosystem. So the, the support that they have um often is funded through the Polka dot Treasury. Um And so for the 40 Polka dot Power Chains that they have, they're going to be building some out some of that capability to support running those chains on GCP. So for, for this particular ecosystem, it's a critical step for them to help get access to um other developers and move along the value chain so that folks aren't having to focus on running a node infrastructure if that's not the thing that they're um best at doing, and they can perhaps focus on the thing where they add value and differentiate and from a Google cloud perspective. Um Before now, we have not done a huge amount in the polka dot ecosystem. So this is exciting for us because we're not trying to uh overly focus on any specific ecosystem. We're trying to enable all folks that are interested in developing for web three to be able to do so. And so this is exciting for us because it's an opportunity for us to have not just a a customer led strategy or first party led strategy, but um also a partner led strategy where we can work hand in glove with folks to make sure that we're touching a number of different ecosystems. How aggressively is Google approaching uh crypto? Now, I mean, if you were to, if you were to gauge it uh 0 to 10, 10 being very aggressive, uh what how would you gauge uh Google as a as a company? It's overall approach to crypto right now. Well, I can only speak for Google cloud because that's the area that I represent and run. And so over the past 18 months, we've been investing in this space, we've continued to hire and we've continued to grow. Not only our business development and our go to market teams, but also our product engineering capabilities. We recently announced in general availability Blockchain node engine that makes it easy for people to deploy um through Google's first party engineering ethereum nodes and soon Sola and Polygon nodes. And we also we've been working on and around data analytics and we're looking forward to being going to add more data sets to what we already have, which are community led data sets. Currently, we're going to be bringing to market first party engineered Google data sets that takes on chain data off chain and makes it much more accessible for the many millions of developers that are on Google cloud platform that might be interested in exploring web three. So we're very committed to this space. We've been here for, for a while. I mean, we've been working with the community since 2018. Um And over the past couple of years, we've been doing a lot more first party engineering work ourselves. And I think we're really beginning to show that we're not just fly by night and only here when the time is uh going well. Uh our startup program has been enabled uh has been enabling web three startups who have um been bridged through this uh tough period to, to continue to get um credits to, to use on Google cloud platform. And we're really trying our best to, to support the ecosystem and not just do it with um press releases as you say, but actually turn up and show that we have product and engineering capabilities in this space as well. James any other big uh partnerships with ecosystems or brands coming up? Yeah. So um you, you may have already seen, I mean, you, you've done a lot of good coverage um of, of Google Cloud to work in the past with Polygon and coin base and others. But recently at Token 2049 we announced um there have been press releases um with uh layer zero came out that was covered at permission list, um orderly network. We've, we've also just covered um uh recently the Z um uh work with us as well. So we're, we're working with a number of different organizations and these releases came out all roughly around the same sort of time. So we're excited to be working with the these customers and um our strategy to link this back to your other question is we go where our customers need us to go and we, we try and meet our customers where they are and provide the services um that, that will help them be successful any that we haven't covered. Well, II I couldn't say whether you've covered everything but of, of just now. Those are the, those are the four that have been recently announced, James. Thanks so much for joining the show this morning. Pleasure seeing you again. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. That was Google Cloud Global head of web three strategy, James Truman.