> One thing that crossed my mind recently was the notion of Google and its long relationship with hardware: we have this thing called the Blockchain now, and it

> One thing that crossed my mind recently was the notion of Google and its long relationship with hardware: we have this thing called the Blockchain now, and it could do with some of Google's hardware to run on, instead of independent factions of people spending their pocket money on their own hardware. I was under the impression that most mining is now done by a few groups using special purpose hardware. Mining using hardware bought with "pocket money" seems like a losing game at this point. > It kind of makes me jealous and annoyed that so much could be spent for what effectively is sometimes just a data center for storing people's holiday snaps on Google Plus, when it could be used to host micro democracies and change the direction of finance. It makes me sad that so much energy is wasted computing hashes for mining when it seems to add so little to society. In comparison, I think hosting holiday photos is a more valuable task. > I suspect all that hardware will eventually be re-purposed many times throughout the course of the Google experiment and probably will eventually be given away at some point to the blockchainers who need it. I'm not sure why Google would give their hardware to a random group of miners. I'm not sure why the miners would want it either since x86 is not an efficient way to mine. Out of date x86 hardware especially.