[governance] Cerfing the Web, or Serfing the Web? (Understanding Google's Internet Evangelism against Internet Access Rights)

[Paul Lehto]

     It would be odd for an evangelist of the Christian religion, or any
other religion, to argue that people had no right of access to the
"Technology" of the Christian religion - the book known as the Bible.  But
Vinton G. Cerf, official "chief Internet evangelist" for Google, Inc.,
strangely argued an analogous proposition:  That people have "no right to
access the Internet" Mr. Cerf is paid to evangelise for by Google, Inc.
Calling the Internet a mere tool or technology that enables "real" rights
such as free speech, Mr. Cerf apparently considers anyone denied the
Internet by arbitrary government action, for example, to have been deprived
of nothing they have a right to access.  Would a religious "evangelist"
take the same attitude about accessing the Bible, and think that the right
to freedom of religion did NOT encompass a right to access the Bible in
either print or electronic form?

     I find Mr. Cerf's argument to be, frankly, nonsensical.  At the same
time, I can readily understand it as a coherent statement of Google's
business position on the future of the Internet when Cerf's statements are
considered side by side with Google CEO Eric Schmidt's famous statements to
the Wall Street Journal in 2010 comparing Google's classic search engine
business with its newer Android-based strategy, focused on giving Android
away to cell phone companies for free, because of the extremely lucrative
market thus made available to Google to sell targeted ads to cell phone
users:

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions,"
> he elaborates. "*They want Google to tell them what they should be doing
> next."*
>
> Let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info Google has
> collected about you, "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care
> about, roughly who your friends are." [And, thanks to Android GPS
> capabilities, they know where you are, within a tolerance of about one
> foot, if you carry an Android "smart"phone.]
>
Google's business vision for the future of the Internet is reasonably
clear:  They already have extremely detailed data on each user, and they
want to use all of that data to push ads in front of users allegedly
targeted to what Google "already knows" they want, and sell many "heads
ups" to local restaurants and other "opportunities" in the physical
vicinity of wherever the Android user may happen to be.

If the above idea is even close to being correct (and it makes sense of
Schmidt's bold claim that we "want Google to tell [us] what [to do] next")
then we can understand why Google, via their official public face and
Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf, would try to evangelize against
Internet access rights in the January 4, 2012 New York Times:  *Any such
"right to access" the Internet is clearly a potential interference with
Google's business plan to reconfigure the Internet based on what it thinks
we want from the Internet*, in Google's sole discretion, based on the
voluminous data Google routinely collects on users.

You and I may prefer to make our own discoveries on the Internet, and do
our own searches.  But Google, quite literally, thinks it knows better than
we do, and even goes so far as to claim that it's what we really want from
Google, in the end:  for Google to tell us all what to do.

Many people object to Google's idea with fervor, and would much prefer to
tell Google *where to go*, than to have Google tell them what to do.

But imagine an aggressive, ad-selling, data-shaping future google that is
choosing so much data for us and putting it in front of our faces that it
can be said that the "Internet" as we now know it is no longer accessible
to us, only an edited and targeted shadow of the Internet chosen by Google
is accessible to us, as a practical matter, on our devices.   This is not
too hard to imagine at all, since most of it is already here.  Such a
"personalized" Internet is but a shadow, albeit an arguably personalized
and targeted shadow, of the Internet we know today.  Perhaps (and this is
only a maybe) we could still get to the "full Internet" if we are committed
to doing so and know what we are doing, but to do so we will have to wade
past Google's paternalistic suggestions for what we should be doing next,
and past Google's conclusion that people no longer want "Google to provide
them with information, they want google to tell them what to do."


Clearly, a right to access the Internet is in tension with, if not in
conflict with, Google's business vision for the future of the Internet.
Mr. Cerf's many notable achievements related to the Internet aside, he
indisputably owes a duty of loyalty to his employer, Google, and in this
particular context, Mr. Cerf is not speaking as a true evangelist for the
Internet, he is speaking out of loyalty to the forthcoming business vision
and profitability of his employer, Google Inc.

Perhaps Google's increasingly paternalistic vision of Internet users, in
which they decide for us what we should do next, and presume that we don't
really want Google to simply provide information at our choosing, will one
day give new meaning to the phrase Cerfing the Net, which perhaps will be
spelled Serfing the Net, in honor of Vinton G. Cerf's feudalistic
exposition on their new internet reality in which one's rights of access to
the Internet are predetermined, as in feudal days, by the land (or
operating system) one is born on or born into.

The masters of the universe at Google are indeed on the very precipice of
being the Lords of the Internet, not evangelists of the Internet.  Lords do
not simply answer searching questions, Lords tell us what we should be
doing next.  Evangelists hope and pray that ALL will access the Internet or
the Bible, but by saying there is no right of access to the Internet, Mr.
Serf is made himself and fellow executives at Google our Lords, and
abandoned his post as Chief evangelist of the Internet, at Google.




-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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