Michael Zimmer.org

Philipp Lenssen points to this amazing visualization of the interconnections among Google’s diverse products and services. I think the connections are meant to denote how various products interact (you can create Google Alerts from within Google News) or otherwise support each other (Google Mars is built on top of Google Maps).

An enhancement of this mapping would specifically highlight how usage statistics from one product are captured and exploited by another, a mapping of the flow of personal information across Google’s product suite (i.e., how one’s search history informs AdSense, etc). I’ve created some basic tables listing these data flows for the dissertation, but this kind of graphical representation would be much more provocative. (To-do item #43.)