This is a literal revolution but one against the participatory web, against us: The goal is to take away the web and guide people into Google’s abstraction on top of it. An abstraction they control and moderate. It’s about monopolizing access to information. A true Metaverse unbound by open standards and your ability to build your own corner of the web according to your needs and desires. Which – given how strong Google’s influence is on web standards – will change the shape of the standards for the technological landscape we are building the web on.
On Google declaring war on the Web
Let’s be frank: we haven’t been paying attention to context for a long time. That’s what hurts long simmering news stories, fuels mis/disinformation, dampens civic engagement.
So the question is how do we use these tools, how do we reshape them, what are we advocating for?