Google's 10th birthday recently slipped quietly by with little remark. Yes, it really only is ten years since this ancient-looking web-page began its journey to world domination. Google is our eye on the world, our gateway to information, our arbiter of truth, our panopticon, and our new homunculus, the hidden shaper of our every thought.
Google in Space
If you think my hyperbole is misplaced, consider the fact that Google are now in space. The satellite GeoEye-1 captures high-res images of the earth whose resolution is second only to military satellites. GeoEye-1 carries Google's logo and they have an exclusive deal to use the images for online mapping. This is perhaps not a big deal. But, as an eloquent commenter on Slashdot put it,
If there is something to fear from Google Maps/Earth, it's the spatial imagery mono-culture developing around consumer and media GIS applications. Google's approach is by no means the best approach for all geospatial data, it just happens to work well for navigating large data sets. But, as we've learned from Microsoft, if enough people are using a solution, the level of technology present in dominant solution becomes the "state-of-the-art" even if it isn't.
For those who do want their conspiracy theories a little meatier than simply worrying about the remaking of the world through a Google lens, there is always the fact that Google can recognise you from your shadow.
Google Street
Well - is there a mono-culture developing, and why might that not be desirable? Take Google Street View (and check out the happy San Fransisco intro). We can't blame Google for the visual tyranny of the culture we live in, but we might start to wonder what Street View is even for - not that anything has to have purpose. But as the Slashdot commenter notes, we go with what is available, rather than what might be ideal. So when Penguin commissions an adaptation of Buchan's The 39 Steps, the medium chosen is the Google Map. The available technologies become the site for play and production as in this fun piece of video playing with the idea of Google facilitated surveillance by The Vacationeers.
So much for the fun stuff; what about the cons? Google have apparently claimed that privacy no longer exists - though this apocalyptic claim has run aground in the UK, where the law has meant that an eery face-blurring has had to be introduced to the street-level imagery. And in Japan, the very notion of reproducing the intimacy of street level life onto a globally accessible platform is culturally problematic. Osamu Higuchi wrote an open letter, describing the cultural attitudes to housing and the street-level facade in Japan:
When we walk along an alleyway like that, we don't stare at and scrutinize the houses along the way. If you look away [from the road] even a little bit, you find someone's living space literally right in front of your nose. It is for this reason, I think, that we have this awareness that peeping at these kinds of places is something that is actually quite rude.
The Google Web
The mono-culture aspirations of Google are now turning to the web, as they launch their own browser, Chrome. Google openly intend to influence the evolution of the web as a platform for web-apps, where a lightning fast Javascript engine can run all your online productivity needs. When Google was born, the web was populated by pages that were under construction, backgrounds tiled with animated fractals and page creators recommended you use use Netscape Gold - or new kid on the block, Netscape Communicator - to best view the site. Now we can look back with nostalgia at the heady debates about whether to allows images into a web page. A Chrome web demands that you stop surfing and start working. The Chrome web will be built not by dabblers and people at the fringe, but by expert computer scientists manipulating DOMs in virtual machines. Fast, clean, small, lightweight, easy to maintain. Google is bringing us the browser on cocaine, the web by an anodyne Ballard.
The Google Truth
So much for the Google habit; but is there rehabilitation? Once we get a taste for the world according to Google how can we ever go back? I Googled as I collated some of the stories linked here. I used Google mail to transfer my draft to another computer. I spent the summer learning to see through the Google Maps API. I inwardly applaud as I learn that Google plans to equip the developing world with broadband infrastructure. I turn over the niceties of Google's experiments with crowdsourced pageranks. My eyes widen as I see satire become reality in the form of a Google fleet. I wonder if perhaps a image-cloned birds-eye-view of the world isn't perhaps a more attractive one. I give everything I do to Google. I await with anticipation for Google search to be my best friend - search and ye shall find. And finally, ultimately, the word of Google shall be the truth.