Google Thinks You’re Stupid—and Works to Keep You in the Dark
Vatic Note: I have a soft spot in my heart for Google. I watched them fight the US "foreign controlled" government in court and spent their hard earned money to do so, to stop the Unconstitutional "no probable cause" spying on Americans. They fought hard and furious and lost. The court was owned, so Google had to comply. They fought, they said, because they deeply believe in freedom of Speech. I believe them. Yahoo and hotmail did not even try to resist, so that put those two high up on my "S" list.
This below maybe true, but then, maybe its our own fault for using any of their short cuts and help tools since we have a responsiblity also to work the brain as often as we can. No one is obligated to make sure we remain smart. Its up to us to do that. Maybe the school system since its funded by taxpayers, but no one else.
Google doesn’t trust anyone—people, officials, even governments—to understand anything. As a result, it is the most secretive Internet entity—and disingenuous about that secrecy, says Andrew Blum, author of ‘Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.’
If every technological extension is also an amputation—as Marshall McLuhan said—then I wonder what part of me Google will cut off next.
First
there was the part that forgot to include attachments with emails. “Did
you mean to attach files?” Gmail helpfully asked one day. “You wrote,
‘I’m attaching’ in your message, but there are no files attached.” Then
there was the part that could quote Marshall McLuhan without Googling.
Soon, perhaps, I’ll actually be looking for a recipe for “marshmallow
fondant”—not the old master himself. We used to say that Google was
making us stupid. But now the process is complete: Google knows we’re
stupid. Quite how stupid, though, you might not realize.
For the last several years I have been on a quest—see my new book, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet—to
visit the actual, physical Internet: its wires, buildings, and places.
We tend to think of infrastructure like this—when we bother to think of
it at all—as top secret and obscured, the kinds of places listed in WikiLeaks dumps, protected by rent-a-cops, and generally inscrutable. All those things are undoubtedly true.
Yet
the Internet I visited was also a surprisingly friendly place,
populated by smart, welcoming people, proud of what they do and eager to
tell me about it. Inevitably, when I arrived at some unmarked building
crucial to the network’s functioning, the same thing happened: the veil
of secrecy didn’t descend, but lifted. My guides happily led me around,
and nearly always spent extra time to make sure I understood what I was
looking at. This happened dozens of times, all over the world. The
cumulative message was clear: It’s my Internet, but it’s your Internet
too. You can know how it works. You should know how it works.
The one exception to that openness was Google—and
the strange hypocrisy of that is something I’ve yet to get over. This
is the company you likely entrust with your personal correspondence,
your most intimate instant messages, and a full accounting of your
curiosity (going back years). But Google does not trust you.
And
it’s not that they don’t trust you to keep a secret, as you trust them,
but rather they don’t trust you to understand. Their stance is the
corporate equivalent of a 1950s-era gynecologist who believes women
can’t comprehend what’s being done to their own bodies. “Don’t worry
about a thing” Google purrs. “We’ll take care of you.”
Google treats governments this way, too. Last week The New York Times reported on Google’s stonewalling of privacy investigations begun by former Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
“Google resisted providing more information, even in the face of its
acknowledgment that the collection was a mistake,” Blumenthal recalled.
All
companies keep secrets, if some more than others. This is disturbing
(if predictable) behavior from an oil or pharmaceutical company; from an
“information” company it is chilling. What repeatedly strikes me aren’t
Google’s secrecy, obfuscation, or blank denials, but the flat-footed
implication that those of us who are curious—whether journalists,
attorneys general, or you—can be brushed aside, as if we don’t even
understand what it is we’re not understanding. When an effort at explanation is made, it’s done with cartoons and bright colors, or with animations that look like something my 2-year-old would like.
Johannes
Caspar, a data-protection official in Germany, certainly felt this way
when, as part of an inquiry into Google’s Street View mapping program,
he asked to inspect one of Google’s data-collection cars. As The New York Times
reported: “Google first said it didn’t know where they were, so it
couldn’t produce them. Then, on May 3, it allowed a technical expert in
Mr. Caspar’s office to see a vehicle. But the hard drive with data was
missing.”
Perhaps they forgot to attach it.
When
I visited a Google data center—and by “visited” I mean “was given a
tour of the parking lot”—I
experienced this condescension firsthand.
Knowing the tight lid Google kept on its facilities, I had been
pleasantly surprised when my request was granted to see their data
center in The Dalles, Ore. The place had been portrayed as a poorly
hidden, smog-belching factory, an image incongruous with the clean white
pages, friendly demeanor, and immediate access we otherwise associate
with Google. Company officials had been vocal about turning over a new
leaf, releasing some statistics from their data centers around the
world, and even a short video tour. But what followed was a
propagandistic farce.
Walking
past a large data center building, painted yellow like a penitentiary, I
asked what went on inside. Did this building contain the computers that
crawl through the Web for the search index? Did it process search
queries? Did it store email? “You mean what The Dalles does?” my guide
responded. “That’s not something that we probably discuss. But I’m sure
that data is available internally.” (I bet.) It was a scripted
non-answer, however awkwardly expressed. And it might have been
excusable, if the contrast weren’t so stark with the dozens of other
pieces of the Internet that I visited. Google was the outlier—not only
for being the most secretive but the most disingenuous about that
secrecy.
After
my tour of Google’s parking lot, I joined a hand-picked group of
Googlers for lunch in their cafeteria overlooking the Columbia River.
The conversation consisted of a PR handler prompting each of them to say
a few words about how much they liked living in The Dalles and working
at Google. (It was some consolation that they were treated like
children, too.) I considered expressing my frustration at the kabuki
going on, but I decided it wasn’t their choice. It was bigger than them.
Eventually, emboldened by my peanut-butter cups, I said only that I was
disappointed not to have the opportunity to go inside a data center and
learn more. My PR handler’s response was immediate: “Senators and
governors have been disappointed too!”
Then
a guy came off the lunch line wearing a T-shirt that said: “People who
think they know everything are annoying to those of us who actually do.”
Andrew Blum writes about architecture, infrastructure and technology for many publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Slate, and Popular Science. He is a correspondent for Wired and a contributing editor to Metropolis. He is the author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. He lives in New York City.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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