Google: We Are the Web. You Really Did Not Know, Did You?
August 31, 2020
Years ago I wrote three monographs about Google. The publisher, now defunct, sold these books after I recycled research paid for and delivered to several clients. The books explored the technologies was developing to redefine what in 2004 to 2008 was the World Wide Web. I included diagrams of a Google walled garden. I explained how Google’s page reconstruction inventions cobbled together data from different sources to create a Google version of content. Heck, I even included the dossier example from a Google patent.
The figure comes from US20070198481. Note that the machine generated dossier includes nicknames, contact information, ethnicity, and other interesting items of information culled from multiple sources and presented in a police report format. The “Maps and Pictures” label is linked to Google Maps.
The patent drawing presented a photo, key facts, and other information about an entity (in this case a person Michael Jackson, the songster). No one paid much attention. One book was circulated within a government agency, but the “real” journalists who requested review copies did zippo with the information.
I spotted a post on Slashdot titled “Brave Complains Google’s Newly Proposed Web Bundles Standard Would Make URLs Meaningless.” Welcome to the reality of the walled garden concept I explained about 15 years ago. The Slashdot post is here and the Brave post is here.
The hiding of PDF urls was one “enhancement” Google introduced several years ago. Researchers who need to document the location of a source document have to use services like URL Clean in order to identify the source of a document, including documents created by US government agencies like DARPA and the CIA. Hey, that’s helpful, Google.
The url masking was little more than an experiment, and it provided the Google with useful data which allows the next “walled garden” architectural enhancement to be scheduled.
Urls from Google are the source.
Why the time lag of a decade? Despite the perception that Google is a disorganized, chaotic outfit, there are some deeper trends which persist through time. These Brin-Page ideas, like the Elliott wave theory, Google becoming the Web is reaching another crest.
Is it too late? Gentle reader, it was too late a decade ago. A lack of meaningful regulation and the emergence of an information monoculture has ceded provenance to Google and a handful of other companies. One does not live in a country. One lives in a dataverse owned, shaped, and controlled by a commercial enterprise.
That’s why it makes zero difference what government officials try to do, the Google is in place and simply enhancing its walled garden, its revenue capability, and its control. Since few online consumers know how to vet sources and validate information, why not trust Google?
And where do the regulators get their information? Why from Google, of course. Logical. And logic is right.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2020
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