Google: an anti-capitalist scapegoat?

This article was published in Spiked Online 16 March 2010

Founded in 1998 by a pair of Stanford PhD students and initially housed, true to Silicon Valley start-up tradition, in a suburban garage, Google is now the world’s leader in internet search technology and one of the most well-known – and valuable – companies in the world. The corporation now has 90 per cent of the US internet search market and, profiting hugely from the sale of what is effectively extremely low-end classified advertising, has expanded into all areas of electronic life, from email to blogging and electronic books to mobile phones.

And here ends the BusinessWeek-style hagiography. If you want to read the tech porn story of how a few plucky nerds conquered the world, I am afraid you will have to look elsewhere.