Nicholas Carr The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2009)

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But as we consider what kind of world we ll be touching, we should be wary of the
stirring words dispensed by Kelly and the other techno-utopians. Although, as we saw with
electrification, optimism is a natural response to the arrival of a powerful and mysterious new
technology, it can blind us to more troubling portents. The simple faith in progress, wrote
Norbert Wiener, one of the great theoreticians of information processing, is not a conviction
belonging to strength, but one belonging to acquiescence and hence to weakness. As we ll see,
there is reason to believe that our cybernetic meadow may be something less than a new Eden.
CHAPTER 7
From the Many to the Few
IT WAS AN ODD moment in the history of modern business. Usually when one
company acquires another, the deal is announced in a carefully staged and scripted event.
Reporters are shepherded into a theater or a hotel ballroom, where the chief executives of the two
firms stand together at a podium. They speak in general terms of the fabulous prospects for the
new company, touting the financial and organizational synergies that the combination will
provide, and they stress that the deal should be viewed as a merger of equals between two
businesses with rich and distinctive histories and cultures. There s little spontaneity to the
proceedings. The words tend to be as interchangeable as the CEOs ties.
But when, on October 9, 2006, Google purchased the fledgling Internet video network
YouTube, tradition went out the window.
Within hours of the deal s completion, a two-minute video appeared on YouTube
featuring the company s twentysomething founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Shot on a
sidewalk with a handheld camcorder, the video had the cheap, do-it-yourself feel typical of the
amateur productions uploaded to the site. For the first few seconds of the clip, the newly wealthy
duo, who appeared to have gone without sleep for days and without sun for months, managed to
keep their euphoria under control as they searched for the right words to explain the acquisition
to what they referred to, repeatedly, as the YouTube community.
Hi, YouTube, Hurley began. This is Chad and Steve. We just want to say thank you.
Today, we have some exciting news for you. We ve been acquired by Google.
Yeah, thanks, chimed in Chen, leaning nervously toward the camera. Thanks to every
one of you guys that have been contributing to YouTube, to the community. We wouldn t be
anywhere close to where we are without the help of this community.
Struggling to keep a straight face, Hurley continued in a tone of strained seriousness:
We re going to stay committed to developing the best service for you you know, developing
the most innovative service and tools and technologies so you can keep having fun on our site.
But a minute into the video, all pretense of gravity gave way, and the announcement
dissolved into a giddy slapstick routine, with the tall, gaunt Hurley playing Stan Laurel to the
shorter, round-faced Chen s Oliver Hardy.
This is great, Hurley said, breaking into a wide grin. Two kings have gotten together,
and we re going to be able to provide you with an even better service.
Chen broke into laughter at the mention of two kings. He ducked off camera, stumbling
down the sidewalk.
Two kings, repeated Hurley, corralling his partner by grabbing him around the
shoulders.
Get your hand off me, king, said Chen, still laughing.
In a vain attempt to get the founders to straighten up, the cameraman shouted out a
question: What does it mean for the user community?
Two kings have gotten together, replied Hurley. The king of search and the king of
video have gotten together. We re going to have it our way. Salt and pepper. Chen doubled
over, and Hurley ended the video by drawing a finger across his throat. We can t do this, he
said. Cut.
The video proved a big hit on YouTube, shooting to the top of the site s most-watched
list. Within a month, it had been viewed 2 million times and had inspired a slew of parodies
filmed by YouTube members and dutifully uploaded to the site. But though the subversive
frivolity of Hurley and Chen s acquisition announcement was remarkable in itself, behind it lay a
much deeper break with the past. In the rise of YouTube we see a microcosm of the strange new
world of online business. The company s success reveals much about the changing economics of
computing and how they re affecting commerce, employment, and even the distribution of
wealth.
CHAD H URLEY AND Steve Chen, together with a third friend, Yawad Karem, had
come up with the idea of launching an easy-to-use video-sharing service after a dinner party in
early 2005. They chose the name YouTube during a brainstorming session on Valentine s Day.
Over the next few months, they designed and wrote the code for their site in the garage of the
Silicon Valley house that Hurley had purchased with an earlier dotcom windfall. After
successfully testing the service in May 2005 by broadcasting a video of Chen s cat playing with
a string, they received $3.5 million in funding from a venture capital firm, enough to cover their
modest startup costs. In December, the YouTube site officially opened for business, and it
rapidly attracted an audience of people looking for a simple and free way to store, share, and
view short, homemade videos (not to mention thousands of clips illegally copied from
copyrighted films, TV shows, and music videos). It was just ten months later that Hurley and
Chen sold the site to Google for a staggering $1.65 billion, bringing each of them a windfall
worth about a third of a billion dollars.
At the time it was bought, YouTube had just sixty employees. They worked above a
pizza joint in San Mateo, California, crammed into a single small office furnished with Ikea
desks and chairs, a rubber chicken hanging from the bare metal rafters. (The company s servers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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