Misunderstanding the Google: A Hot Wok
August 29, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby working the old-fashioned way.
I am no longer certain how many people read blog posts. Bing, Google, and Yandex seem to be crawling in a more focused way; that is, comprehensiveness is not part of the game plan. I want to do my small part by recommending that you scan (preferably study) “Google Is Killing the Open Web.”
The premise of the essay is clear: Google has been working steadily and in a relatively low PR voltage mode to control the standards for the Web. I commented on this in my Google Legacy, Google Version 2.0, and other Google writings as early as 2003. How did I identify this strategic vision? Easy. A Googler told me. This individual like it when I called Google a “calculating predator.” This person made an effort (a lame one because he worked at Google) to hear my lectures about Google’s Web search.
Now 22 years later, a individual has put the pieces together and concluded rightly that Google is killing the open Web. The essay states:
Google is managing to achieve what Microsoft couldn’t: killing the open web. The efforts of tech giants to gain control of and enclose the commons for extractive purposes have been clear to anyone who has been following the history of the Internet for at least the last decade, and the adopted strategies are varied in technique as they are in success, from Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (EEE) to monopolization and lock-in.
Several observations:
- The visible efforts to monopolize have been search, ads, and the mobile plays. The lower profile technical standards are going to be more important as new technologies emerge. The accuracy of the early Googlers’ instincts were accurate. People (namely Wok) are just figuring it out. Unfortunately it is too late.
- Because online services have a tendency to become monopolies, the world of “online” has become increasingly centralized. The “myth” of decentralization is a great one but so was “Epic of Gilgamesh.” There may be some pony in there, but the reality is that it is better to centralize and then decide what to move out there.
- The big tech outfits reside in a “country,” but the reality is that these are borderless. There is no traditional there there. Consequently governments struggle to regulate what these outfits do. Australia levies a fine on Google. So what? Google just keeps being Googley. Live with it.
One cannot undo decades of methodical, strategic thinking, and deft tactical moves quickly. My view is that changing Google will occur within Google. The management thinking is becoming increasingly like that of an AT&T type company. Chop it up and it will just glue itself back together.
I know the Wok is hot. Time to cool off and learn to thrive in the walled garden. Getting out is going to be more difficult than many other tasks. Google controls lots of technology, including the button that opens the gate to the walled garden.
Stephen E Arnold, August 26, 2025
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