The Wake

Wal-mart. I hear the word and my mind reels with the force of a thousand objections shooting to the surface. When it comes to Sam Walton’s infamous big-box nightmare, my brain is stockpiled with sensory and numerical data detailing exactly why we should be dismantling those big blue buildings brick by brick. This is no doubt facilitated by my ability to actually walk into a Wal-Mart, wrinkle my nose and walk right back out and go somewhere else.

When it comes to a company like Google, though, you can’t really do any of those things. There is no Google storefront, no obviously offensive elements and—realistically speaking—little to no competition. As technology and tech culture progress, more and more companies like Google—companies that are completely intangible to the human mind; companies with no physical identity—are going to become huge corporations that will be in need of policing and monitoring. The problem is that we barely seem to notice. No one really thinks about exactly how much money, energy and political clout it takes to build something like the Google empire; a business structure based upon a product so ubiquitous that it’s name is used more often as a verb than a noun. Hell, no one even thinks of it as a business, let alone an empire. When you pull back the layers of tasteful design and cheery philanthropies, though, Google is indeed a corporation and the way it does business is problematic.

First—and maybe foremost, depending on your temperament—is their disrespect for privacy. It’s been known for quite a while now that Google uses cookies to track users’ search histories, but the implications have rarely been pondered. Under U.S. law, such data could be subpoenaed by the U.S. government, with Google servers acting as a centralized database of every search ever undertaken by users worldwide. It becomes even more worrisome when you consider that Google programs are constantly combing your e-mail messages, looking for keywords to create more relevant advertising. Now I’m not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but it is a fact that all of this information is available to the U.S. government. To facilitate this kind of data storage and also claim to not be breaching users’ privacy is simply dishonest.

The worst invasions of privacy, though, have come with Google’s forays into the physical world. The much-discussed Google Earth has been labeled everything from life-changing to terrorist-aiding, but there’s no denying how creepy the premise is: a compendium of street-level photos of areas around the world. When you combine it with Latitude, the new tool that uses GPS to track an individual’s exact location, it gets really creepy. These tools may seem cool for a second, but what kind of actual function do they serve? These applications completely rob us of our privacy and for what purpose? Unless you’re a stalker, I can’t imagine what you would do with them besides waste time.

Of course, all of this technology requires upkeep. One of the biggest criticisms of Google has been their rampant consumption of energy. According to an article in Harper’s Magazine, the Google compound will require enough energy to power 82,000 homes by 2011. With energy needs like that, it’s no surprise that Google utilizes government power subsidies and foreign aid via tapping into Lithuania’s power grid—which, by the way, is 78% nuclear. Google has made a lot of noise about investing in sustainable energy, but it’s been mostly that: noise. Investing some money in vaguely-defined “sustainable energy” has been a winning strategy used by oil companies for a couple of decades now. Basically, you pledge enough money to fix your image but not enough to actually change anything. Despite these “efforts,” we’re still using oil, just like Google will still be using cheap energy for years to come.

And it’s not like they’re spreading the goodwill when it comes to intellectual property. Despite fighting their own copyright and IP battles with Microsoft (over the Chrome browser) and assorted agencies, (over the Google Books project) they’ve still found time to go after various developers and websites for “co-opting” their image. These individuals are often actually trying to increase the functionality of search applications by developing add-ons. An illustrative example is Chris Langsdale’s Deskbar add-on, whose logo was targeted by Google lawyers despite the fact that, under U.S. law, they have no claim to the font or color used in Google’s logo. Still, as they told, Langsdale, “we [Google] do not allow uses of our logo font and color scheme, even if it is being used in connection with words that aren’t Google trademarks.” Uh huh. Run that by me again?

The sort of territorial pissing that characterizes Langsdale’s case is indicative of the way that Google has managed their brand worldwide. In 2007, Google partnered with Dell to bundle their application with all Dell computers as well as develop a Dell-Sponsored search page. That search page is patently ridiculous, devoting the vast majority of space to ad space and pushing user content off of the page. This page is also tied to the Google toolbar application that comes bundled with a piece of spyware that gives users the run-around if they try to uninstall it. If you do manage to get rid of it, you’ll be forced to deal with another piece of spyware that intercepts browser queries and generates error messages. It’s one thing to feel like you have no choice but to use Google, but it’s another thing to actually be cyber-bullied into using it by a malicious computer.

Their tryst with Dell is not the only example of Google abusing its clout. There are so many examples of Google managing ad accounts and search results with an eye for profit and bizarre biases that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Maybe it’s the way that Google deletes ad accounts based on its vague and tyrannical terms, allowing certain companies to keep them while deleting others for insulting scientology. Maybe it’s the way they axed the search-within-search at the request of companies who feared losing ad revenue. Or maybe it’s simply that search results are bought and sold by major corporations, making their ad accounts nearly redundant.

The thing that scares me—and the reason I’m writing this article—is that most people don’t even begin to think about Google as a corporation that is capable of such infractions. The common wisdom is that Google is that bunch of nice boys with the motto of “Do no Evil.” The truth is that the internet has created a completely new market wherein we are consuming without spending money. The human mind’s natural propensity to view consumption and support as money exchanged for tangible goods has allowed corporations like Google to flourish without criticism. What kind of future can we look forward to when most corporations are like Google and, thus, outside of the public’s view?

Truth be told, I have no idea. Google is so ubiquitous that I have no idea how to criticize, lash out, boycott or really do anything against it. I mean, shit, I used Google to find most of the facts in this article. When second rate student journalists use your service to write articles slagging you off, I think you’ve won.

The bottom line is that we need to change the way that we conceptualize corporations. Unless we want to live in a world dominated by ruthless monopolies, we need to become smart consumers of data and technology as well as tangible goods and services, even if this writer doesn’t really have a clear idea of how to do that. All I know is that I saw Terminator 2 and Google looks a little too much like Skynet for comfort right now.