Google, which was recently revealed to hold a monopoly over web search, made the crypto-friendly decision amid ongoing legal battles in the US and the EU. According to a new update, Google has fully completed the integration of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) into Search. This feature has been tested with select users for a while and is not yet available to Google’s global users. Former Google engineer Nick Johnson presented the concept of ENS to the Ethereum Foundation in April 2016, after which the first batch of ENS names were minted in May 2017.

This development now makes it easy for people to search for any name based on the ENS domain, denoted by ‘.eth’.

ENS can be explained as a decentralized domain name protocol. These Ethereum-based domain names are used by crypto users who want to simplify complicated Ethereum wallet addresses to make them human readable. By the way, crypto wallet addresses usually consist of a bunch of random alphabets and numbers that are not only difficult to remember in sequence, but also claim that these addresses are only readable by computers.

Nalin Basu, Product Manager for Web3 at Google, first confirmed the development of X, explaining its utility.

“You’ve all been asking for the @enddomains integration, and it’s live. You can search any .eth name and get the correct balance in Google search! Kudos to the Search Engine team for getting this thing off the ground!” Basu announced on October 9.

Around July 2022, ENS addresses appeared among the most popular liquid assets for trading in virtual asset markets. Usually lighter ENS domains like ‘xyz.eth’ tend to have a higher value than others like ‘asd1as.eth’.

In the same year, Google was reportedly the first to introduce this ENS feature to allow Ethereum wallet owners to track their Ether balance directly through search results.

Nike’s Web3 arm called ‘RTFKT’ and Puma are among the global brands that have purchased ENS domains in the past.