Google’s security foibles, its “aggregate and advertise” model, its avoidance of price signals, its silos of customer data, and its visions of machine mind are unlikely to survive the root-and-branch revolution of distributed peer-to-peer technology, which I call the “cryptocosm.” Today, all around us, scores of thousands of engineers and entrepreneurs are contriving a new system of the world that transcends the limits and illusions of the Google realm. In the Google era, the prime rule of the Internet is “Communications first.” That means everything is free to be copied, moved, and mutated. While most of us welcome “free” on...
