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The Googlization of Everything

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In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling...
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  • 13 March 2012
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In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission—“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible”—and its much-quoted motto, “Don’t be evil.” In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google’s global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the “evil” it pledged to avoid.
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Price: $24.95
Pages: 280
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date: 13 March 2012
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520272897
Format: Paperback
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“An important book. While a number of excellent histories about the emergence of Google have been published . . . few writers have tried to take a comprehensive and critical look at the wider impact on society of Google's vast ambition ‘to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.’. . . Vaidhyanathan's perspective as an East Coast academic outside the group-think of Silicon Valley is a valuable one. He is a clear writer with an engaging voice, and a good guide for this peek behind the wizard's curtain.”
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Family Professor of Media Studies and Law and Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, and the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System.
Preface

Introduction: The Gospel of Google
1. Render unto Caesar: How Google Came to Rule the Web
2. Google’s Ways and Means: Faith in Aptitude and Technology
3. The Googlization of Us: Universal Surveillance and Infrastructural Imperialism
4. The Googlization of the World: Prospects for a Global Public Sphere
5. The Googlization of Knowledge: The Future of Books
6. The Googlization of Memory: Information Overload, Filters, and the Fracturing of Knowledge
Conclusion: The Human Knowledge Project

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index