Search and users shared a symbiotic learning loop before surveillance capitalism

Evidence

At that early stage of Google’s development, the feedback loops involved in improving its Search functions produced a balance of power: Search needed people to learn from, and people needed Search to learn from. This symbiosis enabled Google’s algorithms to learn and produce ever-more relevant and comprehensive search results. More queries meant more learning; more learning produced more relevance. More relevance meant more searches and more users. By the time the young company held its first press conference in 1999, to announce a $25 million equity investment from two of the most revered Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, Google Search was already fielding seven million requests each day. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 213

Categorization

• CANDY: That Google already handled seven million daily searches by its 1999 press conference is a fun datum.
• XREF: connects to: Dominance over society’s division of learning is surveillance capitalism’s new axial principle — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 566; Surveillance capitalism subordinates earlier user reciprocities to derivative extraction for others’ aims — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 298

Broader Connections

• Dominance over society’s division of learning is surveillance capitalism’s new axial principle #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 566
• Surveillance capitalism subordinates earlier user reciprocities to derivative extraction for others’ aims #qualifies (0.70) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 298