The intentional work of hiding naked facts in rhetoric, omission, complexity, exclusivity, scale, abusive contracts, design, and euphemism is another factor that helps explain why during Google’s breakthrough to profitability, few noticed the foundational mechanisms of its success and their larger significance. In this picture, commercial surveillance is not merely an unfortunate accident or occasional lapse. It is neither a necessary development of information capitalism nor a necessary product of digital technology or the internet. It is a specifically constructed human choice, an unprecedented market form, an original solution to emergency, and the underlying mechanism through which a new asset class is created on the cheap and converted to revenue. Surveillance is the path to profit that overrides “we the people,” taking our decision rights without permission and even when we say “no.” The discovery of behavioral surplus marks a critical turning point not only in Google’s biography but also in the history of capitalism.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 288