Google recognition highlights Bitcoin growth

Google have acknowledged the growing popularity of Bitcoin by adding currency convertor tool to their search engine, allowing visitors to track the fluctuations of the digital currency. Bitcoin has slowly worked its way into the public eye since its birth in 2008, but the online currency is now widely-recognised by a growing number of businesses despite not being controlled by a central bank or government.

In 2013, the price of one Bitcoin rocketed up from $13 to over $1,100. While the value of the currency dropped this year following Bitcoin’s exchange company Mt. Gox forced to shut-down in February amid a false report being published claimed Chinese government banned the digital currency in the country, the value has levelled out at around $600 per Bitcoin.

Google decision to add Bitcoin to its currency convertor comes following their link-up with Coinbase, the digital wallet operators, to support the online conversions, in a similar move to the one made by Microsoft in February with its Bing.com search engine. Yahoo followed suit last month by adding Bitcoin conversion to its engine, with Bloomberg also implementing it to its financial terminals in April. As well as being available on Google’s mobile and tablet search engines, the function is now supported by Google’s Voice Search, allowing users to simply ask their phone the current state of their Bitcoin and receive and instant answer.

Following Google’s decision to add Bitcoin to their currency tracker in Google Finance last month, this latest move highlights just how serious the world’s most popular search engine is taking Bitcoin. And it’s little surprise when considering the strides made by the digital currency over the past year. Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin has now become an accepted form of payment by the likes of online retail giants Overstock.com and Tigerdirect.com. Established names such as WordPress, Reddit, Zynga, PayPal and eBay also accept Bitcoin, with even Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic now accepting Bitcoin for people that want to travel on their outer space program.

There has also been a significant growth in the amount of people using Bitcoin for online gambling. A number of trustworthy websites such as Betcoin have wasted little time in gaining an expanding fan base, offering a wide range of traditional casino games using Bitcoin as the chosen currency. With a string of benefits from betting with Bitcoin, most notably the instant pay-outs, plenty of online gambling fans have decided to change the way they bet.

With Bitcoin continuing to grow in popularity, it seems likely that other businesses will continue to follow suit and begin accepting Bitcoin as a currency.