On the podcast this week, Steven Levy, a columnist for Wired and author of the tech classic Hackers, among many other books, discusses his latest book, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. Levy talks about Googliness, the attribute of silliness and dedication embodied by Google employees, and whether it’s diminishing. He discusses Google’s privacy council, which discusses and manages the company’s privacy issues, and the evolution of how the company has dealt with issues like scanning Gmail users’ emails, scanning books for the Google Books project, and deciding whether to incorporate facial recognition technology in Google Goggles. Levy also talks about prospects for a Google antitrust suit and the future of Google’s relationship with China.
Related Links
- In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
- “The Problem With Success: With a market capitalization of $184 billion, can Google maintain its reputation as a brash iconoclast?” Wall Street Journal
- “Life ‘In The Plex’: The Future Of Google,” NPR
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