Not So Evil

Adam Penenberg, Wired News’s media critic, is scared of Google:

When we boot up and get online we hardly notice that Google dispatches a cookie set to expire in 35 years. Then Google filters our reality, dictates our aesthetic, collates and catalogs our memories, chooses what information we mine. The Google experience becomes a collective Rorschach test, which shapes our worldview and affects who we are and what we will become.

I thought that sort of info-apocolypse talk went out with cyberpunk. Maybe it still flies in academe. He goes on:

In exchange for free access to Google’s resources, Google gets to fire advertisements at us from every conceivable angle.

I guess we’re all Google victims, then? Well, see, Google can try to fire adverts at me, but I’m not a victim. Nobody is a victim on the client side. Grab PithHelmet if you’re a Safari user or Adblock if you’re a Firefox user and suddenly: no ads. Now Google’s the victim, if you want to see it that way. You get something for nothing, and capitalism dies a little. Hooray! Penenberg continues:

[Google] is hatching plans for an online payment system that would compete with PayPal, which led Robert Hof of BusinessWeek to write: “Another day, another new Google service that threatens to torpedo yet another outfit’s business model.”

Oh shits! Competition? In the marketplace_?! But people love PayPal! Especially these folks and them and all these nice people! What’s Google thinking, going after such a reputable and well-loved company? UPDATE: Oh, wait, they’re notNET-TECH-GOOGLE-DC.XML.

All sarcasm aside, Penenberg validly “wonder[s] what impact Google’s power will have on our culture.” When I’m free to use their API to present their data however I see fit, I wonder what impact my culture will have on theirs. And if, as Penenberg suggests, Google “is really little more than a content syndicator,” it shouldn’t be hard to replace them with a socially responsible community alternative, right?

Or maybe the market puts its muscle behind the wide-reaching resources it sorely needs.