Blog 4: Secrets till the End

With this blog post, Andrew’s journey through and for the internet comes to a close as we finally finish Tubes. In these final chapters focus is given on the data centers of the internet, most notably that of Design LLC (Google) and Facebook.

Reading chapter 7 I had mixed feelings of being surprised and disappointed, but also thinking this was expected considering the situation. Google’s choice in keeping everything hush about its inner workings is a bit of a let down, as it usually is the case that this company likes (and ultimately works in the business of) sharing information. It does seem like a bit of a double standard for them to want to share information about others while wanting to keep themselves secret - or at least part of themselves. Ultimately though it isn’t that bizarre to see why Google would act this way when it comes to how their connections to other corporations work. Many sites have come up over the years trying to mimic the world famous online search engine, most notably being Yahoo and Bing. It’s only natural that the company would feel pressure to keep some of the inner workings private so that competitors won’t know how everything works, make their own version, and possibly overshadow Google’s services. It’s just business sense.

Despite that though, Mr. Blum did his best to try and give the reader as much info as he could on the general idea on these data centers, and that combined with his other efforts is ultimately why I ended up really liking this book. Though parts of it could be pretty dry due to how much detail he would cover about the history of these locations, they ultimately served their purpose of showing how the past and the future combine when it comes to the internet, as I mentioned in the previous post.

Questions

• While Google tried to keep some information quiet, Facebook seemed fairly open about their data centers. Could their openness be just for good press, and in reality they’re still hiding some major information from the public?
• Knowing now that the internet cloud doesn’t so much connect us as it “roots us” together, do you think such levels of connection across the world would’ve been possible without the internet, seeing as “rooted” connections is essentially how we connect with others in real life?

Image from: https://despabiladeras85.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/why-people-keep-secrets-then-lie/