Google and Its Enemies

In the phys­i­cal world of books, authors and ideas mat­ter the most. But Google’s project to dig­i­tize 32 mil­lion books has dif­fer­ent val­ues. In the Google world­view, con­tent is indi­vid­u­ally val­ue­less. No one page is more impor­tant than the next; the value lies in the page view. And a page view is a page view, regard­less of whether the page in ques­tion has a pic­ture of a cat, a sin­gle link to another site, or the full text of Freako­nom­ics. When all you’re sell­ing is ad space, the value shifts from the con­tent to the viewer. And ulti­mately the con­tent is val­ued at nothing.