Google: the world's frenemy

From The Age-
Google: the world's frenemy
November 18, 2009

Sergey Brin wanted to test a job applicant, so he gave her a snap assignment, writes Ken Auletta in his new book, Googled.

"I need you to draw me a contract," the Google co- founder told the Harvard Law graduate. "I need the contract to be for me to sell my soul to the devil."

As far as I know, Brin never signed that satanic bargain. Yet the anecdote reflects a question at the core of Auletta's thoughtful inside look at the engineers who say "don't be evil" even as they upend what he calls the world as we know it.

Is Google, the owner of the world's favourite search engine, a force for good -- or for ill? Is it a friend to the fourth estate, on which democracy depends, or an enemy?

The answer found in this journey through Google's history of breakthroughs, boundless ambitions and free massages on its campus in Mountain View, California, can be summed up in a word coined by advertising executive Martin Sorrell: Google is a "frenemy" -- neither a friend nor an enemy "but a rival power to guard against," as the author puts it.

Auletta, who writes the Annals of Communications column for the New Yorker, says he spent two-and-a-half years reporting this, his 11th book. Granted extensive access to the company's founders and executives, he emerged with an account that neither idolises nor demonises the cash machine it has become.

"Making money is not a dirty goal; nor is it a philanthropic activity," he writes. "Any company with Google's power needs to be scrutinised."

'Inexcusably Slow'

Yet he also "came away impatient with companies that spend too much time whining about Google and too little time devising an offense." Most established media companies, he says, "were inexcusably slow to wake to the digital disruption."

It's hard not to bellyache about an opponent who piggybacks on your content. Google vacuums up more than $20 billion a year in revenue -- 97 per cent of it from advertising -- even as newspaper circulation slides, network television viewing erodes, and movie studios and book publishers look besieged.

Much of the material in Googled will be familiar to investors who've tracked the company's ascent. For those less familiar with the story, Auletta traces the full arc -- from the days when Brin and Larry Page hogged Stanford University's computer system while creating the engine they originally called BackRub to Google's initial public offering in 2004, which produced more than 900 Google millionaires, including the company's first masseuse, he writes.

Internet advertising

The IPO also marked the moment when content producers learned how much money the upstart was making at their expense.

"The evidence was now visible that Google was attracting more internet advertising than anyone else, and these dollars were being siphoned from traditional media," we read.

Auletta makes the case that Google's clashes with media companies and advocates of privacy protection often reflect the mindset of its engineers: "They naively believe that most mysteries, including the mysteries of human behaviour, are unlocked with data," he says.

Many media executives quoted here question that. One is Tom Curley, chief executive officer of the Associated Press, which claimed Google was commoditising AP content and demanded a license agreement, Auletta says.

"No, there is nothing naive about these guys," Curley tells Auletta. "They are taking everybody else's work and they are figuring out how to do a deal with most other people in which heads, they win, and tails, most everyone else loses."

Early warning

Yet "old media" can't blame Google alone for the digital devastation, Auletta reminds us. Craig Newmark, for one, didn't set out to swamp newspapers when he started craigslist.org, a site where people post job openings, apartments for rent, goods for sale and more. Only later was it clear how this ate into newspapers' classified sections, which generated about a third of their advertising revenue, Auletta says.

The author works hard -- sometimes too hard -- to tell both sides of the story, making a vital contribution to the debate as Google continues to expand into other media, from books to telephones. There's Google News, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Videos, Google Docs -- the list goes on and on.

Auletta also offers a tip to anyone eager to protect his or her privacy: You can "opt out" of allowing Google advertising cookies to track you by clicking on the word "Privacy" at the bottom of the engine's home page and following the instructions.

I did so immediately. There will be no Google Me.

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It is from Penguin Press in the US.

Bloomberg