Google’s founders openly dismiss law as outdated and seek self-governing test zones

Evidence

Both Brin and Page are even more candid in their contempt for law and regulation. CEO Page surprised a convocation of developers in 2013 by responding to questions from the audience, commenting on the “negativity” that hampered the firm’s freedom to “build really great things” and create “interoperable” technologies with other companies: “Old institutions like the law and so on aren’t keeping up with the rate of change that we’ve caused through technology.… The laws when we went public were 50 years old. A law can’t be right if it’s 50 years old, like it’s before the internet.” When asked his thoughts on how to limit “negativity” and increase “positivity,” Page reflected, “Maybe we should set aside a small part of the world… as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out what is the effect on society, what’s the effect on people, without having to deploy kind of into the normal world.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 336

Categorization

• QUESTION: Page’s proposal of exempt ‘safe places’ for experimentation almost predicts the current regulatory-sandbox debates around AI and crypto — worth tracing whether this idea migrated directly.
• XREF: connects to: Google dismissed accountability concerns by asserting dynastic continuity of its founders’ views — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 323; Google executives dismissed resistance as ignorance and equated critics with authoritarians — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 448; Google’s founding culture was a radical technical meritocracy contemptuous of mundane business — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 881

Broader Connections

• Google’s founding culture was a radical technical meritocracy contemptuous of mundane business #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 881
• Google executives dismissed resistance as ignorance and equated critics with authoritarians #corroborates (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 448