Clunky Flow

 

Much as I love this cartoon, I think it distracts from the more interesting (and ultimately) more important story arc that applies to Google: Are we disdainful yet?

Right now. The answer would seem to be yes. 

Eric Schmidt recently

• dismissed the refusal of social networks such as Facebook to let Google scan their content as a “transient” phase.

This remarks demonstrate

• a peculiar disdain for peoples’ natural desire to maintain some privacy with respect to their social interaction
• an apparent blind spot to the fact that a natural desire for privacy means that monetizing personal interaction is a fundamentally different business to monetizing search

and

• suggests that Google maintains a curious belief that it will soon be able to publish all the data it wants over and above what the producers of that content want. And be justified in doing so.

To put these remarks in context, we have to remember that Google is a company who’s business relies on internet search. Internet search has been the killer app. of the web and Google have been the most successful company at delivering and monetizing that service. However, search has recently been superceded by social interaction as the new killer app. of the web.  Internet users now spend much more time and energy engaged in social interactions mediated across the web than they do in searching for content.  And this social interaction is occuring within walled gardens that exclude Google from accessing its contents in order to protect the privacy of it’s attendees.  

Given the context, it would seem that Google

• is getting tetchy at being excluded from a party it considers itself ’entitled’ to attend.

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