Life After Google

Gilder argues that Google's model, in which services are given away free and paid for by advertising and data collection, is reaching its limit, and that a new architecture based on cryptographic verification and distributed ledgers will replace it. He calls the current arrangement the Google system of the world and predicts its collapse.

His technical argument rests on security and on information theory. He contends that the internet was built without a native security or identity layer, that centralised data aggregation is the consequence, and that blockchain-based systems supply the missing layer by making verification a property of the network rather than of a trusted party. He also argues from Shannon and from his own long-standing position that information is surprise, and that centralised machine learning systems trained on past data cannot produce genuine novelty. He extends this into a critique of artificial intelligence claims, invoking Godel and Turing to argue that machines cannot exceed the systems that program them.

The book profiles a set of companies and founders working on distributed alternatives, most of which have not achieved the position he anticipated.

The predictions have not been borne out in the seven years since. Google's advertising model has grown, machine learning has advanced faster than his argument allows, and the blockchain applications he described have not displaced centralised platforms. His philosophical arguments about computation and creativity are stated forcefully and are not defended against the standard objections. Read it as a statement of a position rather than as analysis, and note that Gilder has made confident technology forecasts before with mixed results.