Google is not a good neighbor: platform presence contested 

This blog is a result of the graduate seminar series “Interfacing the (In)formal City” 2021.

Rianne Riemens
March 17th, 2021

Google is not a good neighbor:  

platform presence contested 

A new stream of activism contests the commercialization of public urban spaces by tech  companies. This type of activism critiques the rise of platform urbanism: the increasing  platformization of urban areas that makes tech companies and their logic of datafication more  present in offline spaces. While platform urbanism is sometimes celebrated for the sake of  disruption and innovation, this is not always the case. The protests against the arrival of a start-up  hub initiated by Google in Berlin and against the plans for a smart neighborhood by Google’s  sibling Sidewalk Labs in Toronto illustrate the upheaval caused by the physical manifestations of  the digital tech company. How is the presence of platforms contested in these examples, and how  does it relate to the online activities of digital platforms? 

A digital platform is “a programmable digital architecture designed to organize interactions  between users” that operates in a larger ecosystem of networked platforms (Van Dijck et al. 2018,  4). Digital platforms increasingly play a role in the provision of services in public sectors such as  tourism and transport, causing a transformation within these sectors. In The Platform Society, Van  Dijck et al. explain how Airbnb disrupted the tourism sector in Amsterdam by not contributing to  local tax revenues, demonstrating “how connective platform strategies may undermine the  collectivity of social structures” (25). Digital platforms do acknowledge that they have  responsibilities in safeguarding public values, but their vision on how to serve the common good  is strongly linked to the private stakes they have as commercial companies (Van Dijck et al. 2018).  This vision does not always align with how governments conceptualize the common good and  public values at stake. Consequentially, the activities of a global company such as Airbnb can  cause friction at local levels between platforms and national or regional governments. The friction  between global and local presence of platforms becomes clearly visible when we zoom in on a  specific case: the Sidewalk Toronto project. 

Announced in 2017, Sidewalk Toronto was a project by Sidewalk Labs — owned by Alphabet, the  company that also owns Google — and Waterfront Toronto to develop a new neighborhood in  Toronto, Canada. The project encompassed a design plan for housing blocks, offices and streets,  that would be organized as a smart city in which the use of digital technologies would allow for  continuous monitoring and optimization of urban operations such as transport and waste  management (Wylie 2020). The plan received a lot of critique, among other reasons because  critics feared that platform mechanisms such as datafication and commodification (see Van Dijck  et al. 2018) would commercialize the everyday activities of citizens within the neighborhood. As  prominent critic Bianca Wylie argued: “Sidewalk Toronto merged the physical with the digital in  ways that could have turned publicly managed infrastructure into markets where mediating  companies could do business” (Wylie 2020). Protests such as #BlockSidewalk turned out to be  effective: Sidewalk Labs abandoned the project in 2020, stating it was the result of economic  uncertainty. 

According to Sadowksi and Bendor (2019, 557), the proposals for smart cities such as the one for  Sidewalk Toronto should not be seen as a factual descriptions of an urban area, but rather as an  imaginary that presents a vision on what future cities should look like: a “dynamic future-in-the making”. Such a closed imaginary that highlights the role of digital technologies contrasts with  visions of the open or hackable city, that urge us to think about how “urban spaces and practices  can still be opened up, made legible and understandable and appropriated beyond their  intended designs” (De Waal et al. 2017, 53). In their book on Urban Humanities, Cuff et al. argue  that to interpret and intervene in cities, researchers need to study the contestations and power  relations that play a role in the everyday life of citizens. Sidewalk Toronto provides an interesting  case for this, as it shows the public debate about what kind of futures are imagined, how they can  become materialized and who gets to be part of this process. 

In Kreuzberg, Berlin, the announcement for a new Google Campus — a hub with office space for  start-ups — ignited a lot of critique. Activists worried that the presence of Google would lead to  gentrification of the neighborhood, but also expressed critique about Google’s tax evasion and  surveillance practices (Turk 2018). In line with the mission of the involved organization Fuck Off  Google that strives to ‘degooglify’ the life of citizens, both the online and offline presence of  Google was critiqued. Campaign slogans such as ‘Google is not a good neighbor’ and ‘Google  go home’ questioned the place Google should or should not inhabit. 

Kick It: a playful demonstration against Google in Kreuzberg, Berlin, 2018. Photo  

via GloReiche (flickr).

But as an online platform that operates online as well as offline, Google’s presence cannot be  easily tied down to specific locations. In many ways, Google is already present in cities, for  example through apps such as Google Maps and Waze, Android phones and Google Home  devices. Eventually, Google used the obtained lease for the building in Kreuzberg to facilitate  non-profits not related to Google with free work space. While the non-profits work on initiatives to  improve the neighborhood, activists remained wary that the project would function as a  placeholder or front for Google (Turk 2018). Also without the Google Campus, Google remains  present in Kreuzberg in different ways.  

The cases from Toronto and Berlin represent the confrontation between the manifestation of a  formal infrastructure and informal everyday life. In both cities, the announced plans by Google/ Alphabet sparked critical debates about what the presence of the company would mean for a  neighborhood. The protesters of Sidewalk Toronto worried about the identity of the new  neighborhood, whereas the protesters of the Google Campus wanted to protect the current  creative identity of Kreuzberg. In both cases, the collection and analysis of big data central to the  economic model of Alphabet led to worries about the safety and privacy of citizens. In a broader  sense, the local manifestation of a global platform infrastructure was understood as a threat to the  neighborhoods as hackable spaces that hold the potential for different kinds of futures and  imaginaries of urban life beyond platform urbanism. As a separation between online and offline  presence can hardly be made, it is clear that platform urbanism is in many ways already  happening. Activists, researchers, policy makers and citizens should therefore continuously debate  the desirability of merges between public and private, digital and physical infrastructures as they  localize in the everyday lives of urban residents. 

References 

Cuff, D., Loukaitou-Sideris, A., Presner, T., Zubiaurre, M., & Crisman, J. J. A. (2020). Urban  Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City. MIT Press. 

De Waal, M., De Lange, M., & Bouw, M. (2017). The hackable city: Citymaking in a platform  society. Architectural Design, 87(1), 50-57. 

Turk, V. (2018). “How a Berlin neighbourhood took on Google and won.” Wired. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-campus-berlin-protests 

Van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & De Waal, M. (2018). The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective  World. Oxford University Press. 

Sadowski, J., & Bendor, R. (2019). Selling Smartness: Corporate Narratives and the Smart City as a  Sociotechnical Imaginary. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 44(3), 540-563. 

Wylie, B. (2020). “In Toronto, Google’s Attempt to Privatize Government Fails—For Now.” Boston  Review. https://bostonreview.net/politics/bianca-wylie-no-google-yes-democracy-toronto