Google now displays Ethereum wallet balances in search results

Google now enables some Ethereum wallets to have Ether (ETH) balances tracked directly from the Google search engine, saving you the time to visit Etherscan.

The feature was first announced on Oct. 11 by Google Ventures’ Principal Han Hua on Twitter.

The new feature works via block explorer Etherscan, a website that provides data on the Ethereum blockchain. But when Decrypt tried it with several addresses, some worked and others didn’t, which could mean that Google is rolling out the feature incrementally. 

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin. Its blockchain is used to build popular apps that are decentralized (known as dApps). It plays host to billions of dollars worth of DeFi and NFT trading activity.

Ethereum addresses are public and anyone can find out, with the right tools, how much ETH a wallet holds, what transactions it has made, and what applications its owner has interacted with on the network. It’s the kind of data that can be very valuable to traders and analysts, and companies like Nansen have built businesses around making such data more easily accessible.

Recent efforts suggest Google is playing a key role in onboarding internet users into the world of crypto services and Web3.

The new feature comes after Google’s recent partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase to allow its customers to pay for cloud services in crypto, which is expected to launch in early 2023. Also, Google got in on the Ethereum Merge hype by embedding a countdown ticker until the point at which Ethereum transitioned from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Markus Thielen, a CIO of digital asset services platform Matrixport, told Cointelegraph we shouldn’t be surprised by Google’s efforts in the Web3 space as both commercial banks and Web2 companies continue to do an “enormous amount of work in the background.” 

“This crypto winter is clearly different as established firms continue to deploy their balance sheet [to crypto investments] and might even leapfrog the incumbents,” Thielen said, adding that he believes a mass adoption event for Web3 could come “when the iPhone can be used as a crypto wallet.”

“If and when this happens, the crypto industry will go from 100 miles an hour to 250 miles in a heartbeat,” he said.