The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue

This novel portrays a possible, unfortunate future, where privacy is gone and large search companies and governments can track people's every deed, even if they don't do them. The author, Shumeet Baluja, works at Google, and the startup culture depicted in the opening chapter as well as the life in the (fictitious) search company Ubatoo, are well done and extremely realistic. I've seen it all myself. Read it: you will learn how modern search takes place and the various uses to which it is being deployed. Not a pretty picture, even though we all find the results useful. The real question is whether we want this much power in the hands of powerful companies and governments. Note that the companies have much more powerful computational resources than government agencies. We have learned not to trust the government: why should we trust private, profit-driven companies?