Internet giants such as Google and Facebook are instrumental in shaping citizens’ access to information as well as facilitating cultural interfaces for content production, consumption, distribution, and participation. Actors of this calibre constitute and control large archives of data, be that through facilitating platforms for user-generated content, or through ambitious digitization projects. In the case of Google, these two go hand in hand, as Google is a huge actor in facilitating information through its search machine and web browser, in facilitating user-generated content on YouTube and in providing archives of digitized cultural heritage. The last one constitutes Google’s Cultural Institute, which under headlines such as ‘Let Machu Picchu Take Your Breath Away’, ‘Get Lost in the British Museum’, ‘Step on Stage with the Performing Artists’ and ‘1000 Museums at Your Fingertips’ promises to provide unique digital access and participatory designs to celebrated artworks and cultural institutions.
This paper aims to discuss how Google frames citizens’ participation and user-manoeuvrability through an analysis of selected projects constituted by its Cultural Institute. From the very early writings on the transformative, participatory potentials of the internet, the archive stood up as a prime example of logics that facilitated creativity and citizen engagement. Seen from this perspective, the archive was a site where citizens could turn into active participants and co-creators. However, diving into the archive leaves traces of data and the aim of this paper is to scrutinize how Google’s Cultural Institute facilitates citizen participation, and at what cost. In order to do this an interface analysis will be conducted on selected projects initiated by the Institute, supported by an analysis of how these participatory designs are encapsulated in wider frameworks of political economy. What this entails is being attentive to Google’s privacy and terms, and how these shape the cooperation between Google and established cultural institutions.