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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Kane, Josh, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

City planning--Ontario--Toronto.

City planning.

Technology--Social aspects--Ontario--Toronto.

Technology.

Technology--Political aspects--Ontario--Toronto.

Data privacy--Ontario--Toronto.

Data privacy.

Privacy, Right of--Ontario--Toronto.

Privacy, Right of.

Waterfronts--Ontario--Toronto.

Waterfronts.

Technology--Political aspects.

Technology--Social aspects.

Google (Firm).

Ontario--Toronto.

Physical Description:

xxi, 392 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto : Random House Canada, [2022]

Summary:

"From the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, 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. When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. 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 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. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: O'Kane, Josh. Sideways.

ISBN:

9781039000780

1039000789

OCLC:

1305010849

Publisher Number:

99993767358