Books, Big Ideas, Q&As

O’Kane lifts the lid on Google’s failure to build a city of the future on Toronto’s waterfront

The following is an excerpt from Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy, by Josh O’Kane, one of the five finalists for this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Josh O'Kane, author of Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy: 'Digital giants have spent much of the past 15 years trying to expand their dominance into the physical world, and governments the world over are woefully underprepared for grappling with what this means for their citizens.'Images courtesy of Penguin Random House Canada

Feature

BY JOSH O’KANE

May 8, 2023

A year into its quest to build a neighbourhood “from the internet up” in Toronto, Google sister company Sidewalk Labs was doubling down on Canada. Chief executive Dan Doctoroff and his colleagues embarked on a vast influence campaign that month, meeting with tech CEOs in...

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