Keen On

Are Google and Facebook screwed? That’s the question which Keith Teare asks in today’s That Was The Week tech newsletter. In our age of nationalist globalization, Teare argues, Facebook and Google, the original darlings of the Web 2.0 revolution are, so-to-speak, half-fucked. On the one hand, they are the victims of a legal witch hunt by a nationalist U.S. government intent on punishing Big Tech innovation; on the other, they continue to reap the benefits of an increasingly globalized digital marketplace. No wonder, then, that Lee-Anne Mullholland, the Google VP of Regulatory Affairs, has claimed a kind of Trumpian half-victory in this week’s legal ruling against her company. “We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Mullholland wrote. Perhaps. But as Teare drolly remarks in his editorial, “nobody can accuse the Government of being fast.” No, not even half-fast. In this absurdly anachronistic fight against Google and Facebook, the snail-paced U.S. government is actually fighting the war be