What might the response have been back then if the public were told that Google’s magic derived from its exclusive capabilities in unilateral surveillance of online behavior and its methods specifically designed to override individual decision rights? Google policies had to enforce secrecy in order to protect operations that were designed to be undetectable because they took things from users without asking and employed those unilaterally claimed resources to work in the service of others’ purposes.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 282