First, let me say I love Wired.

They helped me get started in writing publicly in 1995, when I was just starting blogging. And they gave me great leeway -- even though I was a technology columnist, I was allowed to write about my experience with massage training, as well as the time I got called for jury duty. I felt all this was related to my work in technology, and so did the editors at Wired. It's an amazing publication, with an amazing tradition. And I am grateful to them, and always will be.

That said, I practically lost my lunch when I read this piece in yesterday's Wired, that said that no, after all the web isn't dead (they said it was a few years ago) and how do they know? Google told them!

Now this is like the NYT saying that in fact democracy isn't dead, and they know it because the Koch Brothers told them. 

Google has not been a good friend to the web, imho. They should have been, but they have not been. And Wired, even though they have a tradition of liberalism, also has to pay the bills, and they do so with advertising from big companies, like Google, and by doing interviews with the leaders of Google. So they have to be nice to them. Maybe I understand why they did this, but I don't accept that they did it.

I think the same trends that are causing politicians to re-think their approach will soon have the same force on technology. You're already starting to see it, in the backlash against tech yuppies in San Francisco. But I think a lot of the rage there is misdirected, the people who are selling them out aren't the people on the buses, rather they're the people who fly overhead, in their private 747s. And the people who please them by saying stupid ridiculous shit like Google saved the web.