Google software making bitcoin and ethereum transaction history searchable

Google has turned its attention to blockchain, quietly developing a suite of tools—Blockchain ETL—to analyze bitcoin and ethereum transaction data, reports Forbes. Allen Day, leading developer advocate, and his team of open-source developers have loaded the software into Google’s analytics platform, BigQuery.

Blockchain transaction history has not traditionally been easily searchable, requiring specialised block explorer software. With Google’s Blockchain ETL, users can make generalized searches. Day says he hopes his tools will be educational, teaching users for what and by whom blockchain is used.

“In the future, moving more economic activity on chain won’t just require a consensus level of trust,” said Day. “It will require having some trust in knowing about who it is you’re actually interacting with.”  He believes that in order to go mainstream, blockchain users will have to forego some of their anonymity.

Day is now loading other crypto data to BigQuery—litecoin, zcash, dash, bitcoin cash, ethereum classic and dogecoin - alongside other collaborators, who are uploading their own data, for instance, a Dutch developer who uploaded Ripple’s entire transaction history.