In 2014, Google announced listing Bitcoin as part of the currency conversion “mini app” that shows up at the top of certain search results. This week, the search giant revealed that they are now also including three Altcoins in this “mini app,” including Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. This came as quite a surprise as the company had banned cryptocurrency-related adverts on their ad serving platform earlier this year, claiming that the ads are malicious and high-risk in nature.

Google Lists Altcoins In Currency Conversion App

News about Google’s latest cryptocurrency related move has sparked interest all over the world. Just one day ago, the search giant started to roll out an important change in their search engine.

In the past, one could do a search for “USD to BTC” or “USD to Bitcoin,” and a mini app would show up. The app would present the current exchange rate from US Dollar to Bitcoin. This feature was implemented in 2014. Searching for “USD to ETH” or any other cryptocurrency, on the other hand, would only yield standard search results. With this latest change, however, a similar mini app would pop up for these searches. Google search engine has introduced the support for three new crypto coins, which means four of the main cryptocurrencies are now officially supported by this search engine giant.

Beside Bitcoin and Ethereum, Google also now provides instant conversion rates for Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. A simple search for “USD to BCH” or “USD to LTC” would allow the user to access this feature instantly.

An Unexpected Move From Google

This recent introduction of support for Altcoins by Google’s search engine came unexpectedly. Even though the platform has supported Bitcoin for four years now, the company has recently made the public aware of their negative views upon cryptocurrencies in general.

Earlier this year, in March, Google revealed that cryptocurrency and ads related to ICOs were malicious and related to high-risk products. They rolled out a ban for all ads associated with this industry in their AdWords platform.

This week, however, we saw an advert of Coinbase pop up in Google. This suggested that Google may be lifting the policy or, at least, now accepting certain types of cryptocurrency ads on their platform again.

On 10 July 2018, Google also provided more details on a new project called “Google X.” The company revealed that they are looking into the use of blockchain technologies in some of the projects involved with Google X. The company did not reveal any specific details regarding how blockchain will be used or what exactly it will be used for, however.

We can see a couple of projects already listed on Google X, and some of these projects can help in speculating how the company plans to use blockchain technologies. With Boeing’s recent announcement on using Blockchain for new air travel projects they are working on, we can speculate that Google might be planning to use blockchain for similar ventures. This seems likely because the Google X project already lists the use of drones for the delivery of packages, as well as their plans to produce more advanced self-driving cars in the near future.

Even though Google did make a move that suggested the company has a negative view on cryptocurrencies, this week proved that the company might be warming up to this industry after all. Taking a deeper look, blocking cryptocurrency ads doesn’t necessarily prove that Google dislikes this technology. Cryptocurrency scams are more common than one might think. These new moves by Google show that the internet giant is going to make use of cryptocurrency and blockchain after all.