A Google ‘doodle’ countdown to the Ethereum merger, a sign of recognition for the world’s most popular website.
The snap comes as Ethereum’s long-awaited transition to a less energy-intensive transaction validation method is just days away: three and a half days, according to Google’s tally. Typing “ethereum merge” into Google’s search engine now gives a countdown, difficulty rate (how many times a miner must calculate hashes in order to register a block of transactions), hash rate (the total combined computing power used across the entire network), and a cartoon of two cheerful bears approaching with outstretched arms.
If all goes as planned, the two bears should soon merge to create a single panda, which served as de facto mascot for the transition from Ethereum. The presence of the doodle suggests a level of anticipation for the merger felt by even the biggest of tech giants.
One of the first people to tout the doodle on Twitter was an engineer who works on Google’s Web3 team.
“The research team ran with it and made it incredibly fast,” said Sam Padilla, Web3 Client Engineer at Google. Decrypt by MP Twitter. “More recognition should go to the teams that made this possible.”
He noted that the quick turnaround time for implementing Google’s search engine-related features doesn’t happen often.
Padilla said the idea had been raised over the past two weeks among Google employees who wanted to create “a cool easter egg” for Ethereum’s impending transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The idea had germinated in the company’s internal Web3 community chats.
Responding to a user on Twitter, Padilla said data is pulled in real-time directly from Ethereum’s network using some of Google’s hosted nodes.
The company has become increasingly involved in Web3, offering blockchain infrastructure services that use Google Cloud. On its Web3 product page, the company lists Nansen, Dapper Labs, and Solana among its business partners. Google announced that it formed a Web3 team in May.
Most recently, Sky Mavis, creator of the NFT game Axie Infinity, announcement it had entered into an agreement with Google to use its cloud services to validate transactions on its Ronin network, an Ethereum sidechain designed for use in gaming applications.
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