Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt credits Hal Varian's early examination of the firm's ad auctions with providing the eureka moment that clarified the true nature of Google's business: "All of a sudden, we realized we were in the auction business." Larry Page is credited with a very different and far more profound answer to the question "What is Google?" Douglas Edwards recounts a 2001 session with the founders that probed their answers to that precise query. It was Page who ruminated, "If we did have a category, it would be personal information.… The places you've seen. Communications.… Sensors are really cheap.… Storage is cheap. Cameras are cheap. People will generate enormous amounts of data.… Everything you've ever heard or seen or experienced will become searchable. Your whole life will be searchable."

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 310