A new week of cutting-edge projects themed around evil mother Google !!! Backup your data now !!!

In preparation for our upcoming epic F.A.T. Lab meet up at Transmediale10 Berlin we are pleased to announce our next topic week FUCK GOOGLE ! Stay tuned for a series of brand new pieces to be released here in the upcoming week!

F.A.T. lab is nomintaed for the Transmediale Award 2010

Transmediale 2010 “Futurity now!”
February 2nd – 7th,  2010
Berlin, Germany

Come and join F.A.T. at Transmediale! Book your tickets now!

(Catalogue text)

Google is the most popular site on the world wide web. Since Larry Page and Sergey Brin opened the Menlo Park doors of their corporate office in 1998, Google has grown to be much more than just the defacto information search utility for the web. Beyond having over 150 domains, dozens of web, browser and desktop apps, a number of the most popular sites on the web (like YouTube), partnerships with multimedia conglomerates and multinational telecoms, one spy satellite and a mysterious network of telecommunication infrastructure, Google has become a new word in the international lexicon. I Googled it. 구글했다. Je l’ai googlelé. Jeg googlede det. ググった。 Eu Googled isso. Ich hab’s gegoogled. मॅँ googled है. Yo googleo.
Google, Ergo Sum.

But, it wasn’t always easy streets for the kindly, corporate giant. Shining a light into the darkness of the early web was not as simple as it looked. It took patience, a “don’t be evil” mantra, football fields of high-end office furniture, and millions and millions of ads. As F.A.T. Lab fellows Randy Sarafan and Geraldine Juárez, wrote in their tell-all, Google, biopic entitled, Lost and Found:

“Webrings just wouldn’t work… Information needed to be freed and shopping needed to be accessible. There could only ever be one pets.com. Exoticpets.com, rarepets.com, rareexoticpets.com, and rareexoticpetfood.com would all be outposts in the wilderness without a road to lead you there. Google’s benevolent hands built that road. And they built millions of other roads. And then they lined these roads with billboards. And with the money they made on these billboards, they built entire cities of industry. And within these cities, they erected more billboards. And pretty soon, Google, the mere builder of roads, owned half of the frontier, which was no longer a frontier, but a megalopolis without borders.”

So, what is so “fuck-worthy” about Mother-google? It is the fact that a corporate entity, even one as beloved and competent as Google, is in control of such a large stake in the digital network and public utility upon which we have all grown so reliant. And, that as a publicly traded company, it doesn’t have to answer to anyone but its largest shareholders, despite the fact that its decisions effect the lives and private information of millions of people. Few even question or raise a voice in opposition to the Google-ification of the Internet.

Don’t get us wrong, we use Google too. We use search, blog search, gmail, YouTube, calendar, docs, analytics, maps, etc. We use them like we do the sidewalk or a public toilets when we have to take a piss: because it feels like there just isn’t any other option. Sure, there are alternatives to Google. But, they mostly suck. And to not use Google means to lose access to an enormous network and some of the most reliable tools on the Internet.

That is why for Transmediale 2010, F.A.T. Lab proposes ‘FuckGoogle’, a collection of browser add-ons, open source software, theoretical musings and direct actions aimed at creating an awareness of the role Google plays in our daily lives. Throughout the duration of Transmediale, F.A.T. members and friends will publish free software, live streams, communiques and video documentation of actions on the fffff.at blog. So, join us and let’s all FuckGoogle together. By the way, does anyone have Sergey’s email or home address?