Google reclassifies publicly-funded geographic data combined with captured behavioral surplus as private assets

Evidence

Google’s closely guarded “Ground Truth” project, initiated in 2008 but only publicly revealed just four months after the FCC report in 2012, exemplifies the point. Ground Truth is the “deep map” that contains the detailed “logic of places”: walking paths, goldfish ponds, highway on-ramps, traffic conditions, ferry lines, parks, campuses, neighborhoods, buildings, and more. Getting these details right is a source of competitive advantage in the contest for behavioral surplus accrued from mobile devices. The construction of the deep map draws on public resources such as geographic databases from the US Census Bureau and the US Geological Survey, but what distinguishes Google’s maps from all others is the integration of its exclusive proprietary data from Street View. In other words, data compiled through public investments are augmented with data taken from a unilateral transfer of surplus behavior and decision rights. The composite results are then reclassified as private assets. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 473

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies early claim that behavioral surplus is assembled from unilateral transfers of data — this concretely defines the dispossession cycle.
• ADDENDUM: Connected to the trees-as-infrastructure piece: both concern how public/common resources get absorbed into private value extraction.
• SEED: Angle: ‘the deep map’ as a unit of analysis for how private firms convert public knowledge into proprietary assets — a surveillance-capitalism version of the enclosure movement.
• XREF: connects to: Google’s patented user-profiling schema already enumerated behavioral surplus attributes by the early 2000s — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1854; Google’s behavioral surplus became a zero-cost asset diverted to market exchange — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 255

Broader Connections

• Google’s behavioral surplus became a zero-cost asset diverted to market exchange #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 255
• Google’s patented user-profiling schema already enumerated behavioral surplus attributes by the early 2000s #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1854