Google justifies total knowledge collection as a requirement for useful search
Evidence
What you should want us to do is to really build amazing products and to really do that… we have to understand apps and we have to understand things you could buy, and we have to understand airline tickets. We have to understand anything you might search for. And people are a big thing you might search for.… We’re going to have people as a first class object in search… if we’re going to do a good job meeting your information needs, we actually need to understand things and we need to understand things pretty deeply. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1275
Categorization
- DEFINE: This is Page’s own articulation of the ‘preemptive’ knowledge claim that drives surveillance capitalism’s data collection.
- SEED: An essay contrasting this ‘we need to understand things deeply’ pitch with what Zuboff reads as supply-chain capture could sharpen how platitudes license surveillance.
- XREF: connects to: Google must possess each user to provide each user an individual assistant — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 815; Google reimagined search query by-products as a resource for learning — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 212; Google uniquely recognized and exploited search data exhaust that rivals ignored — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 211 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Google reimagined search query by-products as a resource for learning
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 212 - Google publicly misrepresented data retention as technological inevitability.
#qualifies(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 58 - Google uniquely recognized and exploited search data exhaust that rivals ignored
#corroborates(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 211 - Google’s declarations form an interdependent edifice of claims to data
#exemplifies(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 557