The Demise of the Directory: Web librarian work removed in Google

Google and the politics of tabs is the history of Google seen through its interface from 1998 until late 2007. It makes use of all the available Google front-pages in the Internet Archive. Google and the politics of tabs chronicles the subtle changes to the Google front-page real estate, showing which services have risen to front-page tab status the others that have been relegated to the 'more' and 'even more' buttons. It tells the story of the demise of the directory, and how the back-end algorithm has taken over the organization of Web information at the expense of the human editors and the librarians.

Google and the politics of tabs, Quicktime movie, 5'00", Govcom.org, Amsterdam, 2008, http://www.crookedline.nl/google.mov

Research by Richard Rogers, Laura van der Vlies, Kim de Groot and the Digital Methods Initiative, Amsterdam. A Govcom.org Jubilee Production by Crooked Line, Amsterdam.

The Demise of the Directory: Web librarian work removed in Google is the accompanying information graphic in the form of a narrative timeline. Design by Kim de Groot.

• GCO_directoryfall.pdf: GCO_directoryfall.pdf

• GCO_directoryfall.pdf: Timeline of the demise of the Google Directory