Early Google ran a self-contained behavioral value reinvestment cycle treating users as ends

Evidence

To summarize, at this early stage of Google’s development, whatever Search users inadvertently gave up that was of value to the company they also used up in the form of improved services. In this reinvestment cycle, serving users with amazing Search results “consumed” all the value that users created when they provided extra behavioral data. The fact that users needed Search about as much as Search needed users created a balance of power between Google and its populations. People were treated as ends in themselves, the subjects of a nonmarket, self-contained cycle that was perfectly aligned with Google’s stated mission “to organize the world’s information, making it universally accessible and useful.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 217

Categorization

• XREF: The mutual-need power balance contrasts directly with the later asymmetry Zuboff will document — useful for the reader’s foundational framing. — connects to: Google frames users’ unpaid data contributions as an investment in personalized services. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 764; Google’s behavioral surplus became a zero-cost asset diverted to market exchange — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 255; Behavioral surplus windfalls funded Google’s de facto monopoly in Search — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 277 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: When did the reinvestment cycle break such that Google stopped treating users as ends in themselves?

Broader Connections

• Investment crisis at Google justified abandoning the user-service reciprocal relationship #contradicts (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 230