Google Will Eat Itself
Google Will Eat Itself is a conceptual artwork that generated ad revenue by hacking the Google “AdSense” initiative; bots were created to automatically click on banners of web advertising placed on a network of hidden websites. The money from the scheme could be used to buy Google’s shares and hand them over via GTTP Ltd., a firm set up for the artwork to distribute the shares to everyone and turn Google into a public company.
This work is essentially a Google powered cannibalistic economic engine. The artist generates money by serving Google text ads on a network of hidden websites. With the ad revenue the artist then purchases shares in Google stock.
We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!
By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisement mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.
After this process we hand over the common ownership of "our" Google Shares to the GTTP Ltd. [Google To The People Public Company] which distributes them back to the users (clickers) / public.