The Googlization of Everything. Siva Vaidhyanathan

      Google dominates the World Wide Web. There was never an election to determine the Web’s rulers. No state appointed Google its proxy, its proconsul, or its viceroy. Google just stepped into the void when no other authority was willing or able to make the Web stable, usable, and trustworthy. This was a quite necessary step at the time. The question is whether Google’s dominance is the best situation for the future of our information ecosystem.

      In the early days it was easy to assume that the Web, and the Internet of which the Web is a part, was ungoverned and ungovernable. It was supposed to be a perfect libertarian space, free and open to all voices, unconstrained by the conventions and norms of the real world, and certainly beyond the scope of traditional powers of the state.¹ But we now know that the Internet is not as wild and ungoverned as we might have naively assumed back at its conception. Not only does law matter online, but the specifics of the Internet’s design, or “architecture,” influence how the Web works and how people behave with it.² Like Jessica Rabbit in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Internet is not bad—it’s just drawn that way. Still, architecture and state-generated law govern imperfectly. In the People’s Republic of China, the state clearly runs the Web. In Russia, no one does. States such as Germany, France, Italy, and Brazil have found some ways to govern over and above Google’s influence. But overall, no single state, firm, or institution in the world has as much power over Web-based activity as Google does.

      So Google, which rules by the power of convenience, comfort, and trust, has assumed control, much as Julius Caesar did in Rome in 48 B.C. Before Caesar, there was a state of chaos and civil war. Rome was presided over by weak, ineffective leaders who failed to capture the support of the people or to make the city livable. Like Caesar, Google has found its mandate to rule through vast popular support, even in the absence of a referendum. And like Caesar’s, Google’s appeal is almost divine. Because we focus so much on the miracles of Google, we are too often blind to the ways in which Google exerts control over its domain.³

      So how, exactly, does Google rule the Web? Through its power to determine which sites get noticed, and thus trafficked, Google has molded certain standards into the Web. Google has always tended to degrade the status of pornography sites in response to generic or confusing search terms, thus making it less likely that one will stumble on explicit images while rarely blocking access to such sites entirely.⁴ Google has ensured that the Web is a calmer, friendlier, less controversial and frightening medium—as long as one uses Google to navigate it.

      Through its advertising auction program, Google favors and rewards firms that create sites that meet explicit quality standards set by Google, such as simple pages that load quickly, lack of flashy animation, and coherence in search terms that helps ensure users are not tricked into clicking on a pornography site when seeking travel advice.⁵ Google has limited access to sites that place malicious programs on users’ computers. This fight against “malware” is one of the keys to keeping the Web worthy of users’ trust and time. If too many sites infected users’ computers with harmful software, people would gravitate away from the relatively free and open Web into restricted and protected domains, known as “walled gardens” or “gated communities,” that seem less vulnerable to electronic pandemics.⁶ Google also, extremely rarely, directly censors search results when they are troublesome or politically controversial, or when the company determines that a firm or group is trying to rig the system to favor its site. When that happens, Google usually places some sort of explanation in the search results to explain and justify the policy.⁷

      Overall, these policies have the effect of cleaning up the Web, ensuring that most users have a comfortable experience most of the time. Google can usually achieve this goal without stooping to raw censorship. The net effect is the same, however, because the protections that we rely on, including “safe search,” are turned on by default when we first access Google, and our habits (trust, inertia, impatience) keep us from clicking past the first page of search results. Google understands the fact that default settings can work just as well as coercive technologies.⁸ Overall, Google orders our behavior and orders the Web without raising concerns that it is overbearing. It’s a brilliant trick.

      Nothing about this means that Google’s rule is as brutal and dictatorial as Caesar’s. Nor does it mean that we should plot an assassination, as killing off Google might have the same effect on the state of the Web as Julius Caesar’s death had on Rome: a return to unbearable chaos and fractured alliances. In fact, the institutions waiting in the wings to assume governance of the Web, such as commercial telecommunication companies and media conglomerates, are definitely less trustworthy than Google is today. In many ways, we should be grateful that Google governs so well. Google has made Web commerce and communication stable, dependable, and comfortable. By hiding how it does all this behind its simple and clear interface, Google convinces us that it just knows how to make our lives better. We need not worry about the messy details.

      But how did we get to this state of affairs? How was Google able to assume this role so quietly and profit so handsomely from it? What sorts of trouble is Google causing for states and firms? And how—if at all—should we consider regulating the regulator?

      THE SCOPE OF GOOGLE

      Google is sui generis. At its core, it’s a Web search-engine service. The primary reason anyone uses Google is to manage the torrent of information available on the World Wide Web. But as the most successful supplier of Web-based advertising, Google is now an advertising company first and foremost.⁹ Its search function is why we visit Google. Advertising is what keeps it going. However, there were search-engine companies before Google, and several competitors still do just as good a job linking people to information as Google does. And there were Web advertising companies before Google, just as there are now other firms, such as Facebook, that try to link a user’s expressed interest in subjects to potential vendors of goods and services that reflect those tastes. But there has never been a company with explicit ambitions to connect individual minds with information on a global—in fact universal—scale. The scope of Google’s mission sets it apart from any company that has ever existed in any medium. This fact alone means we must take it seriously.

      Google has expanded in recent years into a general media company because it delivers video and text to users, even if much of that content is hosted on other institutions’ sites. Its 2006 acquisition of YouTube, the clear leader in hosting short videos contributed by users, made Google a powerful disseminator of video content.¹⁰ This role has put Google and YouTube at the center of major world events, such as the antigovernment protests in Iran in the summer of 2009 and the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in 2008.

      Since about 2002 Google has steadily added to the roles it plays in people’s lives, thus complicating the Web’s taxonomy.