The Googlization of Everything. Siva Vaidhyanathan
Google insists on being regulated at the lowest level, specifying a one-size-fits-all prescription to regulate its complex interactions with real human beings and their diverse needs. In response to every single complaint about its behavior, Google officials answer that they are happy to take down offensive or troublesome content if someone merely takes the initiative to inform the company. It does not want to be held responsible for policing its own collections, even those collections that would not exist at all if Google did not aggregate or create them. Through its remarkable cultural power, Google has managed to keep much regulatory action at bay around the world.
In fact, Google seems poised to try to mold regulations in its favor in several important areas. In the United States there are signs that the current government has established a close relationship with Google.
During his presidential campaign in 2008, Barack Obama made it clear that he has strong ties with Google’s leaders, employees, and technologies. Obama visited Google headquarters in the summer of 2004 and again in November 2007, when he announced his “innovation agenda.”68 Most of Obama’s campaign speeches were released on YouTube. Eric Schmidt endorsed Obama and traveled with him in the fall of 2008. Once elected, Obama’s transition team continued to use YouTube as its video platform of choice for reaching a broad audience. This relationship raised many questions and criticisms by privacy and consumer advocates, because Obama seemed to favor the Google-sponsored platform over other commercial sites or open-source alternatives. All of this occurred just as Google came under intense scrutiny for its data-retention policies and the extent to which it controls the market in Web advertising. Having a close friend in the White House could make a difference if Google gets into trouble with either U.S. or European officials.69
Another troubling example occurred in the summer of 2010, when Google abandoned its long-standing pledge to support open, nondiscriminatory, “neutral” digital communication networks in the United States. In July, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission failed to forge a compromise between Internet companies that support a “neutral” Internet and telecommunications companies, such as Comcast and AT&T, that would like to control the speeds at which certain data flows over their segments of the networks. Google stepped in where regulators had stalled to forge an agreement with Verizon in hopes of establishing a template for policy—or at least a framework for private agreements among firms. The result was that Google continued to claim it stood for the public interest—and an open, “classic” Internet—while dealing away significant control over mobile data channels and many future areas of growth. Significantly, Google’s agreement would bar the FCC from making new rules governing data flow over networks, thus effectively privatizing policy.70 All of these developments speak to the complex and changing relationship that Google, the chief regulator of the Web, has with the United States government, one of the chief regulators of commerce around the world.
Over and above these particular ways that Google dominates the nature and function of the World Wide Web, it has a greater, albeit more subtle governance effect.71 Mostly by example, the company manages to spread the “Google way” of doing things. It executes a sort of soft power over not just the content of the Web but also users’ expectations and habits when dealing with it. Google trains us to think as good Googlers, and it influences other companies to mimic or exceed the core techniques and values of Google. In addition, Google’s success at doing what it does enhances and exploits a particular ideology: techno-fundamentalism. This soft-power mode of governance, one that depends so heavily on the blind faith we place in Google, is the subject of the next three chapters.
| TWO | GOOGLE’S WAYS AND MEANS |
| FAITH IN APTITUDE AND TECHNOLOGY |
The American comedian Louis C. K. tells a story that illustrates the constant ratcheting up of expectations for newness, “nowness,” speed, and convenience. He was traveling on an airplane in early 2009, C. K. told the television host Conan O’Brien, when the flight attendant announced that his flight offered a new feature that airlines had been working to install for some years: in-flight access to the Internet. “It’s fast and I’m watching YouTube clips,” C. K. said. “It’s amazing. I’m on an airplane! Then it breaks down and they apologize that the Internet is not working. The guy next to me goes, ’Pphhhhhh. This is bullshit.’ Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago.”1 C. K.’s point is that when we become habituated to the amazing technological achievements of recent years, we forget to be thrilled and amazed. We lose our sense of wonder. We take brilliance for granted, and so we ignore the human elements of fortitude, creativity, and intelligence that underlie so many tools we use every day. The dynamic of consumer expectations has been running at such high speeds for so many years that we become frustrated with devices and services (such as slow computer processors and Internet access) that did not even exist a few years ago.
This constant, insatiable hunger is sharpened by constant pressure on firms to expand markets and revenue, as well as by a widespread lack of historical perspective on technological change. But at its root is the black box of technological design. Although consumers and citizens are invited to be dazzled by the interface, the results, and the convenience of a technology, they are rarely invited in to view how it works. Because we cannot see inside the box, it’s difficult to appreciate the craft, skill, risk, and brilliance of devices as common as an iPod or a continuously variable transmission in an automobile.
This chapter examines some of the cultural assumptions that underlie the enthusiastic reception of Google and our willingness to trust the company with information about us. First, the chapter examines how we discovered and celebrated Google in its early years and the values that it built on to earn our trust. Then it explores the values that have characterized Google’s practices and people.
Google’s first brilliant innovation was, of course, its search algorithm. Its second was the auction system for placing advertisements, which generates tremendous revenue for the company. But a close third is the way that Google measures us and builds its systems and services to indulge our desires and weaknesses. Google works for us because it seems to read our minds—and, in a way, it does. It guesses what you might want to see based on requests that you and others like you have already expressed. You can type a vague term into the search query box, not knowing exactly how to phrase your desire, and Google will most likely return a remarkably appropriate list of things you might want. Moreover, Google conditions us to accept and believe that that list does in fact deliver what we want. The suggestive power of Google Web Search, made explicit by the drop-down list of choices that appears when we start typing, is the magic that hooks us. In many ways Google has measured and understood us better than we have assessed ourselves.
Google works so well, so simply, and so fast that it inspires trust and faith in its users. As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”2 And of course trust in magic, or suspension of disbelief, is a central part of the process of embracing the deific. That’s why so much of what we say and write about the experience of Google sounds vaguely religious. It sure looks like magic from this desk chair. I send a string of text out into the ether, and less than a second later the glowing screen in front of me offers a list of answers. It’s not quite an abundance; that would be overwhelming. It’s a manageable set of choices—just enough to give me a sense of autonomy over my next move but not too many to paralyze me. If I am shopping for shoes, there is little spiritual about the process. But if I am searching for connection, affirmation, guidance, even directions, the interactions I have with this semi-intelligent system (and all the intelligent beings to whom it can connect) can verge on the spiritual. If I am seeking something meaningful, Google seems to help me find meaning.
If you are a lonely Muslim boy growing up in Berlin, offended by the spiritual poverty and sexual depravity you perceive around you, then Google can connect you with a community that understands. If you are gay young woman growing up in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, Google could be the first place you go to seek affirmation and advice. If you are a commodities trader in the City of London, you might feel a rush of adrenaline