ventures can be arranged into three large categories of responsibility. By that I mean that Google has at least three ways of hosting content, each of which grants the company a different level of control over the content. Each category of responsibility demands a different level of regulation. The first category is what I call “scan and link.” Google Web Search is the best example of this. Google does not host the relevant content. Content sits on servers around the world run and owned by others. Google merely sends its spiders (a small program that “crawls” around the Internet, following hyperlinks from one file to another) out to find and copy the content onto its own servers so that it can supply links to the original content via Web Search. In this case, Google bears minimal responsibility for the content. If it links to illegal or controversial material, Google may remove the link, as in the standard “notice and takedown” process that governs much behavior on the Web, including copyright infringement in many places. In most areas of U.S. law, search companies are generally not held liable for the existence of the content on some third-party server. But in most other countries, including those in Western Europe, search engines are held at least minimally responsible for the links they provide. In France and Germany, for instance, Google must actively block anti-Semitic and other hate-filled sites. In less liberal countries such as Egypt, India, and Thailand, Google actively removes links to content that offends the state. But generally, Google has little responsibility for content hosted by others, and thus its search activities demand the lightest level of regulation.
The second category is what I call “host and serve.” Blogger and YouTube are the best examples of this. In these cases, Google invites users to create and upload content to Google’s own servers. As in the Viacom case, Google certainly bears some responsibility for the nature of the content it holds on its own servers. In February 2010 a court in Italy convicted three Google executives of failing to remove an offensive video that showed an autistic teenager being bullied by rowdy youths. Despite hundreds of comments on the page objecting to the content, Google was not made aware of its existence until two months after its posting, when Italian police requested its removal. Google has tried to argue that it should be held to the same level of responsibility for this content that it would have for a link to a third-party site. And there was much confusion in European law over what constitutes “notice.” In early 2010 an Italian judge ruled in a manner out of step with most European understandings of how notice and regulation should work in matters of privacy violations. Relying on bizarre reasoning, Judge Oscar Magi concluded that Google’s position as a profit-making venture limited its exemption from liability. Nonetheless, it’s clear that in situations in which Google solicits and hosts content—as with YouTube—it bears a higher level of responsibility and is likely to attract more litigation and regulation as a result.67
The areas in which Google has faced the strongest protest worldwide just happen to be those ventures in which Google has the greatest responsibility for content, what I call “scan and serve.” In these activities, Google scours the real world, renders real things into digital form, and offers them as part of the Google experience. The two best examples are Google Books, which has generated objections and lawsuits from authors and publishers around the world, and Google Street View, which has sparked actual street protests and government actions. In Street View, Google staff take cameras out around the globe to capture images of specific locations that can be used to enhance Google’s services, such as its map feature. In doing so, Google’s cameras also capture images of individuals and their property. In this case, Google bears great responsibility for creating the digital content as well as hosting and delivering it to Web users. And thus these actions justify the highest level of regulatory scrutiny.
Although its various services thus incur differing levels of responsibility, Google insists on being regulated at the lowest level, specifying a one-size-fits-all prescription to regulate its complex interactions with real human beings and their diverse needs. In response to every single complaint about its behavior, Google officials answer that they are happy to take down offensive or troublesome content if someone merely takes the initiative to inform the company. It does not want to be held responsible for policing its own collections, even those collections that would not exist at all if Google did not aggregate or create them. Through its remarkable cultural power, Google has managed to keep much regulatory action at bay around the world.
In fact, Google seems poised to try to mold regulations in its favor in several important areas. In the United States there are signs that the current government has established a close relationship with Google.
During his presidential campaign in 2008, Barack Obama made it clear that he has strong ties with Google’s leaders, employees, and technologies. Obama visited Google headquarters in the summer of 2004 and again in November 2007, when he announced his “innovation agenda.”68 Most of Obama’s campaign speeches were released on YouTube. Eric Schmidt endorsed Obama and traveled with him in the fall of 2008. Once elected, Obama’s transition team continued to use YouTube as its video platform of choice for reaching a broad audience. This relationship raised many questions and criticisms by privacy and consumer advocates, because Obama seemed to favor the Google-sponsored platform over other commercial sites or open-source alternatives. All of this occurred just as Google came under intense scrutiny for its data-retention policies and the extent to which it controls the market in Web advertising. Having a close friend in the White House could make a difference if Google gets into trouble with either U.S. or European officials.69
Another troubling example occurred in the summer of 2010, when Google abandoned its long-standing pledge to support open, nondiscriminatory, “neutral” digital communication networks in the United States. In July, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission failed to forge a compromise between Internet companies that support a “neutral” Internet and telecommunications companies, such as Comcast and AT&T, that would like to control the speeds at which certain data flows over their segments of the networks. Google stepped in where regulators had stalled to forge an agreement with Verizon in hopes of establishing a template for policy—or at least a framework for private agreements among firms. The result was that Google continued to claim it stood for the public interest—and an open, “classic” Internet—while dealing away significant control over mobile data channels and many future areas of growth. Significantly, Google’s agreement would bar the FCC from making new rules governing data flow over networks, thus effectively privatizing policy.70 All of these developments speak to the complex and changing relationship that Google, the chief regulator of the Web, has with the United States government, one of the chief regulators of commerce around the world.
Over and above these particular ways that Google dominates the nature and function of the World Wide Web, it has a greater, albeit more subtle governance effect.71 Mostly by example, the company manages to spread the “Google way” of doing things. It executes a sort of soft power over not just the content of the Web but also users’ expectations and habits when dealing with it. Google trains us to think as good Googlers, and it influences other companies to mimic or exceed the core techniques and values of Google. In addition, Google’s success at doing what it does enhances and exploits a particular ideology: techno-fundamentalism. This soft-power mode of governance, one that depends so heavily on the blind faith we place in Google, is the subject of the next three chapters.
| TWO | GOOGLE’S WAYS AND MEANS |
| FAITH IN APTITUDE AND TECHNOLOGY |
The American comedian Louis C. K. tells a story that illustrates the constant ratcheting up of expectations for newness, “nowness,” speed, and convenience. He was traveling on an airplane in early 2009, C. K. told the television host Conan O’Brien, when the flight attendant announced that his flight offered a new feature that airlines had been working to install for some years: in-flight access to the Internet. “It’s fast and I’m watching YouTube clips,” C. K. said. “It’s amazing. I’m on an airplane! Then it breaks down and they apologize that the Internet
