The Beast File: Google

This video, created for ‘Hungry Beast‘, a news program that airs in Australia on the ABC1, depicts Google as a dangerous, pretentious, ubiquitous and ever growing advertising giant: ‘building an empire on your street, in your phone, in your DNA, trying very hard not to be evil’.

The animation features most of Google’s services and portrays them as means to “own” every bit of personal information, and use it for advertising purposes. It exemplifies the “Googlization” of many industries and contexts in a compelling way, building towards an image of someone with a strong “force“.

The perspective, in which Google is conceived of as a growing “creep” that seeks to dominate many other industries and contexts, next to searching the Web, is nothing new. Googlization has been dealt with extensively by Siva Vaidhyanathan, Richard Rogers and others, critically examining the implications of Google’s actions.

Although the standpoint in this video might lack a nuanced view of Google’s mission, it draws attention to contemporary new media debates on privacy, surveillance, ownership and Google’s position in it. Moreover, this video attempts to denote the impact of Google’s ubiquities and actions.

Graphics by Patrick Clair, written by Elmo Keep.