Abstract

With Google marking its 20th year online, the piece provides a retrospective of cultural commentary and select works of Google art that have transformed the search engine into an object of critical interest. Taken up are artistic and cultural responses to Google by independent artists but also by cultural critics and technology writers, including the development of such evocative notions as the deep web, flickering man and filter bubble. Among the critiques that have taken shape in the works to be discussed here are objects and subjects brought into being by Google, Googlization, Google’s information politics, its licensing as well as issues surrounding specific products such as Google Street View, as Google leaves the web, capturing more spaces to search.