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1 Introduction
âWhat is Google?â If Google Search is the most effective way to gather objective information to answer this question, and indeed any query, then Google Search results suggested that Google is:
- 1 A verb with the definition âsearch for information about (someone or something) on the Internet using the search engine Googleâ.
- 2 A word that originates from the 1990s, the proprietary name of the search engine.
- 3 An American company that is most commonly known as a search engine.
Few online users would disagree with the above three definitions. However, some may be surprised that if we add ânasdaqâ to the question âWhat is Google?â, they cannot find any financial information about the company, instead they will be shown financial information about Alphabet Inc. that is traded as GOOG in the stock market. What is Alphabet? Seventeen years after Google was founded and eleven years after it became a public company, the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin formed Alphabet, a parent company under which Google and many other companies are âcollectedâ, just like the letters A to Z are collected in the alphabet.
However, most Google users may not even be aware of the new company because Alphabet downplays the new development. The name of the parent company appears neither on Google Searchâs sparse, clean frontpage nor on the frontpage of YouTube, the login page of Gmail, nor Google Maps. Google is simply too well known to be called something else. If the word Google belongs to the modern lexicon and is a brand to online users, then why did the founders launch a new parent company yet keep the new company out of the spotlight? After the founding of Alphabet, is Google being what it used to be? Or is it becoming something else?
The questions about the being and becoming of Google beg other questions: What do we mean when we say: Google is a verb that stands for search, Google is a search engine, and Google is an American company? What if all these beings are not static, or have never been such? What if Google, the company, and Google, the search engine, have never been âthingsâ? That their âthingnessâ is only assumed because they are named? If we head out to Alphabetâs headquarters in Mountain View in California, move out all the furniture, disconnect all the computers, and send all the employees home for a day, will this configuration still make Alphabet a company and Google a search engine? Although the temporary evacuation is impossible, this book asks for the imagination to visualize a different configuration of a corporation.
The aims of this book are twofold: first, it offers a political economic critique of the Alphabet corporation by showing its being relies on capitalism and its becoming is also that of capitalism. In other words, the very existence of Alphabet as a corporation relies on a specific political-economic system in which change is inevitable. The business strategies, political clout, and cultural ideology of Alphabet all illustrate the limits of capitalism, in particular whether surplus capital and labor can be re-absorbed into the system. Yet, the corporation seeks to overcome the limits of capital by seeing itself as something new, something always in a becoming process. By being new and always becoming, Alphabet seeks to overcome the political-economic system that restricts its growth. To see how Alphabet accomplishes this impossible feat, I propose that an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) be applied along with a political-economic critique, because ANT enables an analysis of humanânon-human interaction in value production.
The second aim of this book is to explore if computational methods of network analysis will benefit a political-economic critique of Alphabet. While political economy emphasizes capitalism as social relations, political economists usually do not quantify and visualize how these social relations look. Network analysis may also illustrate ANTâs conceptualization of actors and networks because ANT rejects the existence of stable entities (such as corporations, politics). Networks are assumed to be unstable by ANT and data visualization captures a moment of being. In addition, ANTâs emphasis on describing a network rather than explaining it can be illustrated by a visualization of networks.
Before I proceed further, I first disambiguate the use of Alphabet and Google in this book. I use Alphabet to refer to the technology conglomerate that serves as the parent company of Google since 2015. I use Google in two senses: first, the pre-Alphabet era from 1998 to 2015; second, the online services offered under the Google brand, most notably Google Search. The title of the book Alphabet: The Becoming of Google is then about the beings of two companies and how one becomes the other.
Being and Becoming
Philosophers and psychologists have written extensively about the meanings of being and becoming. The study of ontology is a study of being and reality, it seeks to understand what makes a thing a thing (Campbell, 2006). The branch of social ontology studies the nature and properties of the social world, in particular how social interaction gives rise to the existence of various entities (Epstein, 2018). The becoming of entities then relies on human beings making sense of the material world through thinking about it, naming it, and acting on it.
Becoming is also related to good and evil. Western beliefs hold that human nature is innate and humans must be changed in order to do good (Combs, 1996). For example, Judeo-Christian religions believe that humans are born sinners and they must be made good. In contrast, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that humans are born good, but the outer environment can lead humans to become evil. In both beliefs, humans are born with some unchanged quality, but the quality may be changed for good (or worse) with enough guidance.
How are the above philosophical and psychological concepts of being and becoming related to a critique of Alphabet? First, Google and Alphabet are assumed to have been in a constant state of becoming. Alphabet is not just a search engine or an American company, but it is also at once an organization of employees, gender and class relations, infrastructure and buildings, culture and symbols, and so on. The state of becoming is not just about growing bigger, having more services, and gaining more customers, but it is about associating and dissociating different elements (people, buildings and infrastructure, businesses, technologies) in the network. For example, although the interface of Google Search frontpage may not have changed much since its debut, the algorithm is constantly updated. Because the algorithm is always changing, is Google Search a stable entity or has it always been a process of becoming? To give another example, the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have moved from being the President and CEO of Google to those of Alphabet. Google now has Sundar Pichai at the helm. Is Google the same entity despite the change in leadership? One day, if Page and Brin decided to leave Alphabet altogether, would the company be the same entity?
Second, there are no innate characteristics about a search engine and a company. The understanding of a search engine and a company has resulted from and arises with interactions between human beings and machines in a social context. What gives Google, the search engine, and Alphabet, the corporation, the properties of âthingsâ are not only the material things (such as the buildings, the hardware inside the buildings, or the people inside the buildings), but also the languages, practices, and symbols created in social interactions between humans and machines. If the Google Search algorithm is a becoming process and if leadership can change, then what gives Alphabet the property of a âthingâ? Applying Pierre Bourdieuâs concept of âfield theoryâ, Hillis, Petit, and Jarrett (2013) argued that the entity of Google is a result of a field of practices. The existence of Google as a company, a search engine, and a platform is a social existence in relation to others. Relations are largely understood to be those between humans. What makes Google ârealâ is believed to be those social relations as well as peopleâs awareness of the relational similarities and differences between and among practices and objects.
However, I challenge the belief that social relations can only be established between humans, because they are also established between humans and machines. The crown jewel of Alphabet, the Google Search algorithm, may appear like a âthingâ because it is assumed to be a neutral tool that enables human interaction through information production and retrieval. Google Search is assumed to be a neutral tool that passively waits for humans to feed it information, and to connect humans through search. The search engine, in other words, is perceived to enable human interaction through validating relational knowledge. An example is vanity search in which users google their own names to see what information exists about them. What they seek is not so much about their own information but a validation of human relations.
However, by seeing a search engine as a process of becoming, we have to acknowledge that information does not already exist before the algorithm interacts with the indices. When users type in a query, they seek information as much as the algorithm seeks information from users. The search results are curated and presented by the algorithm that actively shapes how the results are interpreted. At the same time, users give feedback to the algorithm about how good the search results are. If the first few links are clicked, the algorithm will understand that the keywords are appropriately used. If no link is clicked and another search is done, then the algorithm will understand the keywords need to be refined. Using Bourdieuâs concept of field of practices, humanâmachine interactions are often unexplored even though they play a role in shaping symbolic interactions. By seeing a machine as an active partner in social interactions, the machine learns and changes itself as much as the users do.
Network
Network is an important concept to visualize the being and becoming of Alphabet. Network has gained popular usage not only in our daily life lexicon but also in academia. Yang, Keller, and Zheng (2017) stated that networks precede digital technologies; human beings have always formed networks. But digital technologies and the rise of social media make networks become palpable in modern society. For example, online social networking sites made visual a userâs online and offline connections. In academia, Castellsâ concept of the network society (1996) has been influential among media studies scholars because he has pointed out the paramount role that new information and communication technologies play in mediating social structure. Nevertheless, these concepts of online and offline networks all assume that humans are the agents to make connections. Technologies may be seen as tools to establish the connections but they are not seen as active agents.
In this book, the definition of network is drawn from Galloway and Thacker (2007), who defined a network as, âany system of interrelationability, biological/informatic, organic/inorganic, technical/nature. The ultimate goal is to undo the polar restrictions of the pairingsâ (p. 28). This definition complements with how the network is assumed in Actor-Network Theory (to be defined and explained later). ANT suggests that a network is made up of both humans and non-humans. Humans act upon non-humans, and vice versa, because both have agency. Both types of actors pick up properties of the network when they are assembled in it. Networks are always temporary because humans and non-humans are in constant assemblage and dissociation. However, a stabilized network may appear to be a thing where inner connections are rarely questioned. Once humans and non-humans leave the network and join others, they pick up the properties of the new network as well. To give an example related to Google Search, usersâ search queries probe the algorithm to process the data. In doing so, users interact with the devices on which Google is installed. A search yields an output in a recognizable way on the interface. At the userâs end, the machine appears to passively respond to humans, yet the machine also has an agency because the algorithm is aware of where, when, and how the search is conducted. The accumulated information then is assumed to make the machine intelligent because it can âguessâ what keywords and key phrases users will input.
In this book, I look at three implications of network. Alphabet is not just a search engine, but it is also a corporation, it relies on the Internet as a network, and it materializes a network as a âthingâ. The network concept has three implications in this book: first, Alphabet is a corporation in shareholder capitalism, it taps into the network of capital for resources. The network generates wealth for the shareholders. Second, the very existence of a search engine relies on the Internet, which is a network of humans and machines. Third, Google Search organizes information to materialize the network as a âthingâ, to give it a property of an entity. In all three implications, networks are made up of both humans...
