Alphabet’s Plank: Is Google Eliminating Its Risk by Monetizing Mobility?

A recurring theme in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, is the plank: an offensive strategy of supreme skill, allowing victory over one’s opponent without ever needing to pick up a sword. Why remain in a costly, enduring, and uncertain battle — where even in victory, one emerges weak and vulnerable — when it can be sidestepped altogether? While the rest of the world challenges Facebook and Twitter to a duel in honor of preserving First Amendment rights over the right of free enterprise, has Google been quietly and swiftly seizing the under-exploited market of mobility?

Perhaps — until it recently announced it would cease using third-party cookies to track users across multiple platforms, citing individual privacy concerns and future risk to a “free and open Internet.” Really people? Since when do capitalist actors stop creating value for their shareholders out of ethical concern, in favor and consideration of creating value for society?

I’m not being facetious here. Conscious mega-capitalists are very few and far between, and rarely have the other sort chosen the preservation and protection of individual privacy rights over Wall Street. Neoclassical economists won the war to even consider such ideals as Americanin the early 20th century, supplanting subjective utility (e.g., consumer preferences) as the rightful king and the yellow-brick-road to capturing surplus market value.

And a “free and open Internet?” C’mon. The last time anyone was able to enjoy any form of a “free and open Internet” — aka digital democracy — was in 2011 when, through collective action, people rose up against oppressive regimes across much of the Arab world. Remember the Arab Spring?

As much as I presently feel pulled to dive into this topic — specifically, to contrast digital democracy circa 2011 with the 2021 version used to incite and operationalize the recent U.S. insurrection — I must not digress. Yeah, I’m pissed at what was lost too, but we lost it 10 years ago, and there is no way capitalist or political elites will ever willingly let us have that much power again. Make no mistake about it, the part about a “free and open Internet” must be bait for the folks who’ve forgotten, discounted, and think it’ll “save us” someday, or never knew this history, to begin with.

Alright, I’ll bite. What are you really up to Google?

Google’s announcement included two important clues to its opposition strategy: 1) to limit the ability of advertisers to collect information from small files downloaded onto users’ devices, and 2) to develop technologies that will continue to allow the delivery of personalized ads without the use of individuals’ specific browsing information. By limiting any production or serviceability of advertisers, Google is not only scorching the digital ad market as it is known today but also likely using its conquered foe to strengthen its new position.

In this scenario, time is of the essence — once the earth is scorched, it is scorched for everyone.

The Prime Importance of War: Life and Death

To Sun Tzu, all warfare is deception, and winning the war before it even begins, is the ultimate victory. One could reasonably make an argument that early capitalist actors of the Internet knew that very few, if any, policymakers would be able to conceptualize digital platform monetization strategies, let alone have the capacity to sound the regulation alarm to prevent costly market failures.

The Social Dilemma, a Netflix docudrama released in early 2020, provides an excellent primer to the mind-bending business model of social media platforms (more broadly categorized as digital platforms, a subset of the digital economy.) Joe Toscano, a former Google consultant, and a key figure in the film explains why we just can’t help spending an average of two and a half hours each day on social media — a fraction of the total time we spend daily — consuming digital content.

“If the algorithm of the Internet were a highway and on the side of that highway, there was an accident, we’d all be looking at it, right? Everyone does, but every time someone looks at that accident, it’s the equivalent of a like, a click, or an engagement on the Internet. So, if the algorithm of the Internet were a highway, it would think we needed more car accidents,” says Toscano.

The strength of rational choice and agency are no competition to the superior strength of attention economics (a subset of behavioral economics.) In effect, the digital platform user of today is more akin to a digital puppet than a digital zombie. That’s because the attention deficit created by the digital experience not only makes one zone out but also vulnerable and easily coerced toward the thoughts and behaviors desired by others with the bankroll to pay for it.

Let that sink in a moment.

Put another way, all that raw data created as a result of our daily use of digital platforms, apps, and devices amounts to about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, every single day. This scarce resource — or so it was? — is generated by approximately 1.8 billion users worldwide, who spend on average 5.4 hours per day dedicated to this task. Then, as fast as we produce our own raw data, it is captured, processed, then packaged as commodities in the behavior futures market to the highest bidder with a capitalist or political interest in our future behavior.

“It’s free,” they said. And we all shrugged our shoulders, dialed-up, clicked “I accept,” and got busy producing all that gold for capitalists — specifically surveillance capitalists — without our permission and without compensation. Tzu calls this feeding off your foe.

Did we really agree to all that? No, we did not.

But, it’s never been about whether we live or die (i.e., the cost to society) — we were dead upon arrival. Our data, however, will live forever in the stores and algorithms of the Internet, which are conveniently protected by various intellectual property rights, worldwide.

Clever, very clever, indeed.

Is it not surprising then, that even the most progressive data privacy countries remain fuzzy as to the relative ability of modern data privacy laws to protect us in any meaningful way. Who’s going to take the several minutes required to read a data privacy policy before looking at the passing accident on the highway? Nobody. It’s a total non-starter. Even the penalties are a pittance if levied at all. However, I have to say, the transparency of the EU is so refreshingly unAmerican.

If we do not address this fundamental failure of the digital privacy policy consent model, global society will remain on the hamster wheel, chasing its tail indefinitely. However, all is not lost just yet. Organizations such as the Better Ethics and Consumer Outcomes Network (BEACON) are developing positive-sum solutions for the regular digital platform actors and market stakeholders, whose livelihoods also depend on the sustained feasibility of the digital economy.

This life-and-death battle, IMHO, is more between the small handful of digital mega-platforms — more similar to an oligopoly than a monopoly — who surpass many national economies around the world, in wealth and power. The threat to national security is real. These oligopolists have enough capital and interest to exercise control, influence, and/or direct public discourse, vis-à-vis the digital ad market and its algorithms that maximize engagement, in unprecedented and historical ways.

In economic speak, seeing desperate ground for social media mega-platforms, Google knows policymakers (i.e., the other invisible hand) will likely continue to aimlessly focus there too, hastily slapping back in the dark toward what many are calling the splinternet — that is, many parallel digital single markets. Paradoxically, the chaos created by the media, the politicians, and the public-at-large creates a lot of noise — and an opportunity for Google to find a way to hold on to its ecosystem.

What’s the Best Way to Win? Not to Fight at All.

Coincidently, about the same time Google made its announcement, I saw a tweet by David Lazarus, consumer columnist for LA Times and KTLA, about a story the WSJ broke. It said, “…T-Mobile say[ing] it’s doing customers a favor by automatically opting them into a new marketing program.” What the [****]? Feeling a growing rage inside of me seeing such a blatantly deliberate, even obvious sleight-of-hand user experience — and one more example of aggressive auto-opt-in market adoption of purported data privacy consent — I forced myself to keep reading…

What caught my eye in the WSJ article was this, “U.S. law restricts how phone companies handle ‘customer proprietary network information’ such as call logs and billing information, though there are few federal limits on how carriers use the troves of data generated by modern smartphones.” Is Google securing an IP-protected monopoly on device-centric user data production?

Using Google to refresh my memory, it turns out Google moved its Pixel device to T-Mobile two years ago. Then, about a year ago, T-Mobile announced it was joining forces with Google to expand RCS (Rich Communications Services) to its Android customers. Coincidence?

As it turns out, MOBI Connected Mobility Data Marketplace (CMDM) Working Group released a statement today too. Their aim? To, “enable a marketplace that could securely commodify mobility data and ensure data privacy for mobility users.”

The Working Group is co-chaired by DENSO, with support from Accenture, AMO Labs, Cognizant, Constellation Network, Continental, CPChain, DMX, Fifth9, Filament, Ford, IBM, NuCypher, Ocean Protocol, RouteOne, ShareRing, Swedish Blockchain Association, and Toyota Insurance Management Solutions (TIMS).

Who else might they need to complete the team?

Google — and Apple — in the hand or on the wrist and Starlink positioned in the sky to provide satellite Internet access to the world.

And that’s a whole lot of new ad space that will need our attention.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Update (Sunday, May 22, 2022)—As a follow-up to this story, listen to Episode 80 of “The Data Diva” Talks Privacy Podcast, where Debbie Reynolds talks to Andrea Amico Amico, Founder & CEO, Privacy4Cars. They discuss Andrea’s journey into the Data Privacy industry and his knowledge of personally identifiable data captured by cars, the enormous volume of data that cars transmit and retain about the automotive operator, how the data of individuals can benefit companies who sell the data, how the vehicles are like a browser on wheels, third party data sale of data from cars, the need to claim your car’s app, data that remains in the vehicle when sold or traded, right to repair and data privacy issues in legislation about cars, whether automakers will be more transparent about data capture and sale due to EU regulations like the GDPR, the sale of car data to data brokers, nudge technology and cars, Smart City integration with cars, the inability of the owner to find the information collected without great expense, the threat to cybersecurity, and his hope for Data Privacy in the future.