How else may I serve your Grace?
Yes my liege, dispatch Duck Duck Go.
From The Guardian:
To fight a housing crunch of their own creation, tech companies are planning company towns worthy of Gilded Age robber barons
Much contemporary criticism of Google focuses on the invisibility of the company’s vast monopoly power and the consequent indifference of both everyday consumers and government regulators. In ways that we rarely stop to acknowledge, much less understand, the tech giant’s digital domination shapes everything from the profitability of individual corporate enterprise to our consumption and communication practices.
Soon, however, as Google expands its geographic footprint beyond the digital world into physical urban spaces, the potential impacts of the company’s unchecked powers may become both obvious and intolerable. This year alone the tech giant will spend $13bn expanding in 24 US cities. In some places, the company will bring not just jobs but entire campuses with fully equipped offices, data centers, retail spaces and even residences.
Like industrial monopolies before it – from US Steel to the Pullman Company – Google is leveraging its significant influence to create entire urban economies dedicated to its own productivity and profitability. While this may sound like a recipe for economic boom, history suggests that the intimate intertwining of monopoly-driven corporate profit, governance and everyday life may undermine both democracy and individual autonomy. Already, much of Google’s geographic development has been shrouded in secrecy, making it nearly impossible for local communities to understand – and to oppose – the long-term impacts. Only through public records releases has the public learned that the US locations of Google’s expansion have been influenced by furtively secured tax breaks.
But are the jobs and financial investment that this behemoth company brings nonetheless worth it – especially for cities with stagnant economies? What’s the worst that could happen?
It’s hard to imagine, but the example of Google’s expansion in San Jose – where a profoundly undemocratic, feudal nightmare looms – may be instructive. Google has spent $380m on land for the development of a new company campus in this Silicon Valley hub. Rather than celebrate the company’s impending presence, savvy residents and watchdog groups have raised alarms that Google’s expansion will exacerbate the high cost of living and augment displacement and homelessness. Amplifying their fears is the reality that city’s negotiations with Google have essentially taken place behind closed doors through the company’s use of non-disclosure agreements.
But Google has assured the public that it also plans to address the local housing crisis that it helped to create by investing $1bn in the development of 20,000 new homes in the Bay Area – 5,000 of them in San Jose alone. The vast majority of this investment – $750m – will be used to “repurpose” Google’s land to develop homes for “all income levels”. The rest of the money will be used to incentivize developers to build affordable housing....MORE
