Main entry:

O'Kane, Josh, author.

Title & Author:

Sideways : the city Google couldn't buy / Josh O'Kane.

Publication:

Toronto : Random House Canada, [2022]
©2022

Description:

xxi, 392 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-378) and index.
Prologue: After the Gold Rush -- Everything Now -- Big Rings -- Building a Mystery -- Is Anybody Home? -- Shoreline -- Rose-Coloured Glasses -- Limelight -- Northern Touch -- That Don't Impress Me Much -- In Undertow -- The Other Shoe -- Left and Leaving -- Blue -- In Too Deep -- Prelude to the Feud -- Twist My Arm -- It's My Way -- Raise a Little Hell -- Shine a Light -- Maybe Tomorrow -- Underwhelmed -- Make and Break Harbour -- Epilogue: Break It to Them Gently.
Issued also in electronic format.

Summary:

From the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, O'Kane offers an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city's woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs' pitch for the long-forsaken property--with former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff as the urban-planning company's CEO--Sidewalk's bid crushed the competition. But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff's team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company's vision for the high-tech neighbourhood--and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city's corridors of power and activism. To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech's digital might into the physical world around us. With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O'Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. --From publisher description.

ISBN:

9781039000780 (hardcover)
1039000789 (hardcover)

Subject:

Google (Firm)
Google (Firme)
City planning Ontario Toronto.
Technology Social aspects Ontario Toronto.
Technology Political aspects Ontario Toronto.
Data privacy Ontario Toronto.
Privacy, Right of Ontario Toronto.
Waterfronts Ontario Toronto.
Urbanisme Ontario Toronto.
Technologie Aspect social Ontario Toronto.
Technologie Aspect politique Ontario Toronto.
Confidentialité des données Ontario Toronto.
Droit à la vie privée Ontario Toronto.
Fronts de mer Ontario Toronto.
City planning
Data privacy
Privacy, Right of
Technology Political aspects
Technology Social aspects
Waterfronts
Ontario Toronto

Holdings:

Location: Library main 315962
Call No.: 315962
Copy: 1
Status: Available