Google Is Counting Down to Ethereum Merge with 'Easter Egg' on Search Engine

A Google "doodle" is counting down to the Ethereum merge, a sign of recognition from the world’s most popular website.

The nod comes as Ethereum’s long-awaited transition to a less energy-intensive proof of stake method of validating transactions is just a few days away: three and a half days, by Google's count. Typing “ethereum merge” into Google’s search engine now yields a countdown clock, the difficulty rate (the number of times a miner must calculate the hashes in order to record a block of transactions), the hash rate (the total combined computing power being used on the whole network), and a cartoon of two happy bears approaching each other with outstretched arms.

If all goes as planned, the two bears should soon merge to create one panda, which has served as the de facto mascot for Ethereum's transition. The doodle’s presence suggests a level of anticipation for the merge felt at even the biggest of giants in tech.

One of the first people to tout the doodle on Twitter was an engineer who works on Google's Web3 team.

“The search team ran with it and made it happen incredibly fast,” Sam Padilla, a Web3 Customer Engineer at Google told Decrypt via Twitter DM. “More recognition should be going to the teams who made this happen.”

He noted the quick turnaround for implementing features related to Google’s search engine does not happen often.

Padilla said the idea was raised within the past couple of weeks among employees at Google who wanted to create “some cool easter egg” for Ethereum’s pending transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The idea had sprouted up in the company’s internal Web3 community chats.

In replying to a user on Twitter, Padilla said the data is being pulled in real-time directly from Ethereum’s network using some of the nodes hosted by Google.

The company has become increasingly involved in Web3, offering blockchain infrastructure services that use Google Cloud. On the page devoted to its Web3 products, the company lists Nansen, Dapper Labs, and Solana as some of its business partners. Google announced it had formed a Web3 team back in May.

Just recently, Sky Mavis, creator of the NFT game Axie Infinity, announced it had reached an agreement with Google to use its cloud services for validating transactions on its Ronin network, an Ethereum sidechain designed for use in gaming applications.