“I am a humanist to the core, and I don’t believe I’ve ever even set foot on Chalmers campus before. My dad is a physics teacher, and he would laugh himself to death if he saw me now.”
These were the words of cultural journalist and author Andrew Ekström, who visited Chalmers a few months ago to talk about his acclaimed book “The Google Code”.
 

In front of a crowd of some 50 people, Ekström gave an entertaining and informative lecture inside the recently inaugurated high-tech facilities in the Virtual Development Laboratory on campus Johanneberg. He gave generously of himself and was lavish with illustrative examples from his book, which had a large impact when it was published in spring 2010. “The Google Code” remains the first review of this phenomenon coming from Sweden.  

“I’m not here to ask you to stop googling – but it might be nice to treat yourself to a Google-free day, and not to put all your eggs in one basket,” says Andreas Ekström, admitting that he failed when he tried to create his own Google-free day last year. 
“It was over already at 6:45 am when I opened my Google calendar.” 

Google’s world domination is both terrifying and useful – and Andreas Ekström admits from the start his own mixed feelings about the search giant’s major influence over our digital life. Some quick facts to illustrate Google’s near total domination:

  • 89 percent of all searches in the world are done through Googl
  • Google handles 22, 000 searches per second
  • Every second, Google earns 1,902 SEK after taxes (280 USD)
  • Google is the fastest growing company in history

Andreas Ekström lists several other examples that provide breathtaking perspectives and insights. The bottom line is that Google’s knowledge about us Web users is becoming more and more all-encompassing. While we unwittingly share this information, Google is building up an extremely comprehensive data bank which, if it falls in the wrong hands, could be used against us.

“We ask Google questions, but we are also giving them a lot of answers. No other company in the world is in the same position. Google has a market share that perhaps can only be matched by the Chinese Communist Party”, he said during the nearly hour-long lecture at Chalmers.
 

As a journalist at Sydsvenskan newspaper, Andreas Ekström has often written about the digital revolution taking place in our lives. Today, he is perhaps the single most sought-after Swedish journalist to be hired to speak as an expert in newspapers, on the radio and on television. 

His career really took off in a guest column in Expressen on July 7, 2009. In it, he wondered why no one dares to put the critical questions to Google, comparing the non-existent Google debate with the violent storm of criticism levelled at the government’s FRA surveillance law.

“The debate was raging, and all the while we were tossing our personal data into Google and Facebook. Why do we trust Facebook and Google more than we trust the state? I don’t know. But invite your friends to a barbecue on Gmail, and soon advertisements for fire-lighting fluid will show up in your inbox,” says Andreas Ekström.

After the column in Expressen, Ekström received a call from SVT’s debate program Agenda, who wanted to feature him on the same program as the prime minister.
“I was sitting there having my makeup done in the same room as Reinfeldt, and we sat and nodded at each other in the dressing room. I’d got my 90 seconds on the box,” said Andreas Ekström.

He dared to stand up and voice fearless criticism of Google, while realizing the company has its many loyal users to thank for much of its success. From the start, Google has been very active with their relationships with their users.
“Just like Ikea and Apple, Google has fans always willing to go to bat for them. This gives these companies a unique special status. It’s very strange that Apple is still playing the underdog even though it is the largest company in the world,” he says.

The Expressen column caused a storm of angry letters and emails from Google fans who wondered how he had the nerve to criticize and question the company.
“Sometimes you just don’t want to know that you have to kill animals to eat meat, or that Astrid Lindgren sometimes swore. The same sort of examples apply to Ikea, when Ingvar Kamprad’s taxes were audited,” says Andreas Ekström.

He also believes that Google’s consistent refusal to post ads on its own homepage is another key factor for its success:
“I believe this a crucial reason behind why we still go there. Google has succeeded in creating a sense of being the Internet’s own homepage. ‘The Internet Starts Here,’” he says. 

An equally instructive and entertaining example from his own journalistic life deals with how he got Germany’s winning young pop vocalist Lena Meyer-Landrut to comment on her victory even before the finale – with the help of Google and Youtube.

As Sydsvenskan’s dedicated Eurovision reporter during the winter and spring of 2010, Andreas Ekström dashed around reporting from all the Swedish competitions and finales, after which he would report from the final round of the international Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo.

It was Tuesday of the finale week, with the final round to be decided on a Saturday, when Andreas Ekstrom had his idea:
“I realized that I could see which of the 38 entries had the most views on YouTube. It turned out to be the German singer, Lena,” he says.
He got the same results when he looked at who received the most Internet searches using the analysis tool Google Trends: Lena Meyer-Landrut.
“That same day I called and asked for an interview with Lena. No problem, I got to meet her on Wednesday and said: Congratulations! You won, how does it feel?”

After showing her the statistics, he managed to get Lena to answer questions as if her victory were already a fact.
“I made a fictitious victory interview with her. She said it was the greatest thing that happened to her and that she would probably be touring a lot in the future.”
Three days later, Lena Meyer-Landrut won by a landslide in the Eurovision Song Contest, which Andreas Ekström had already “known” thanks to Google’s accuracy.

However, he feels that this very accuracy can be a problem, and that Google often fails to take the most sensitive privacy issues seriously.
“Google has a tendency to diminish and laugh off controversial issues. They are not very good at questioning ethical issues and their own role,” he says.

During its relatively short lifetime of fifteen years, the search giant has given rise to a whole new profession: search engine optimization consultants. New websites are tailored to Google’s search criteria in order to rank as high on the hit list as possible.
“The result is that web developers no longer build websites that are not compatible with Google. And I think that’s wrong.”

 

More information (in Swedish mostly, sorry ’bout that):

Read Andreas Ekström’s blog >>>
http://www.andreasekstrom.se/

Read Andreas Ekström’s guest column in Expressen >>>
http://www.expressen.se/kronikorer/sommarkronikorer/1.1632008/andreas-ekstrom-var-ar-de-kritiska-fragorna-om-det-har-google-ar-varldens-enda-supermakt-pa-natet.

Read more about the Virtual Development Laboratory at Chalmers >>>
http://www.chalmers.se/en/areas-of-advance/production/Pages/Virtual-Development-Laboratory.aspx

 

Text: Michael Nystås, http://www.swedenintouch.se/Michael-Nystas

Photo: Jan-Olof Yxell and Wikipedia

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