Web freedom is at serious risk. And Google's Sergey Brin knows just who to blame.
In a discussion with the Guardian, Brin said he's more worried than ever about the future of openness on the Web, and he pointed fingers at several entities putting freedom at risk. Repressive regimes, for example. The US government. Facebook and Apple.
As the Guardian points out about Brin's comments:
The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
Brin has some points here, and there's no doubt that the open Web is in danger on multiple fronts. But it's troubling that this warning is coming from Google -- the same Google that is seeking control of every Web process one can think of. (The same Google with this person as its chairman...)
Google, while still strong, has a lot to lose in the battle for the future of the Web. Facebook and Apple are natural competitors and digital thorns in its side. Controlled access hinders Google's ability to do successful business in places like China. Piracy crackdowns would seriously harm Google's ability to host content.
Now, please don't mistake my comments for those uttered by Cary Sherman, the RIAA chairman, who accused Google, Wikipedia, and basically everyone except SOPA supporters of tricking Web users into opposing that lethal legislation. Google et al didn't misinform us that SOPA was bad and dangerous news. Those companies were right and played an important part in January to put a stop to destructive legislation that the average Web user may not have otherwise known about.
What is concerning, though, is that it's clear Google sees an opportunity now to ride that wave and turn it in its own favor. It's not just SOPA that was bad, it's all things that don't jive with Google's business strategy (which, these days, seems to be "take over everything"). As Brin told the Guardian about Facebook, "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive."
Well, boo hoo. Those sure are interesting words coming from the founder of a company that just changed its privacy policy so that users are forced to be one identity across all of its sites (the better to target you, my dear!). And it's laughable hearing this from Brin, seeing as Google recently started using aggressive tactics to force users onto its own social network.
Or as one commenter on the Guardian wrote:
Google playing the open and free card is highly cynical. Google's view is that it's great to be open as long as you are logged into a Google account where your web browsing behavior is efficiently tracked under one login and password, for the benefit of their advertising business.
If Google's chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf's recent request for people to "start something" in the name of Web freedom is any indication, we can probably expect more to come from Google in terms of "warnings" about the future. And while those warnings may be within reason, when they're coming from the company that controls so much of the Web and seeks to control more, it's crucial to read between the lines.
Nice perspective, Brian. And the fact is most of the time people will swallow anything the higher ups at Google say. I'll continue to pick them apart, but many are happy to fall in line and repeat the Google rhetoric.
You are probably right, Bolingbroke, we like to be comfortable.
This increasingly shows the value of sites such as IE as a source of information that enables us to make informed choices to protect our individual freedoms. The ability to make choices based on good information is key.
A full spectrum of opinion from throwing drivers licenses and social security cards into the bonfire to why worry if you have nothing to hide.
DHagar writes, "I wonder how long they think the public can be fooled?"
Pretty much forever I think. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" here at IE I doubt if there are many out there donning their Vendetta masks and converging onto Mountain View.
From what I know I think most people are very social animals and love the idea of joining the hive.
(Now I think I've lost my place on this list of search engines. Is AltaVista next or maybe Lycos?)
Good point about Google being an enterprise, Kim. People forget that the big Internet companies follow the capitalistic road; profit is the underlying motive, subjecting everything else. It's the job of the law to intervene on the people's behalf.
But there is a lot of conflict about who is acting in the public interest.
If we had wide-open competition, then such oxymoronic involuntary agreements might be reasonable. But properly, we should be able to negotiate, to say, I agree to this but not that; you can use this information for 48 hours for sys admin purposes, but not that or that or that information at all, and this you can keep for up to a week...
Actually, I give it only 1 frown (on a 5 smiles to 5 frowns scale) on my proposed bills ratings page.
IOW, it's not nearly as bad as Google, or Yahoo!... abuses, and certainly not as bad as the recently signed domestic warrantless searches via UAVs bill. (Of course, next, they're going to enact felony penalties for knocking down the trespassing unconstitutional evil gadgets.)
And yet, Google's, and FB's, and Friendster's, and Grouply's, and Yahoo!'s, and state governments', and federal governments'... privacy violations must be combatted. These abuses must be turned around.
Personal private information like name and address, let alone Socialist Insecurity Numbers are NOT "public records", regardless of what corrupt government functionaries claim. A big part of the problem is that not enough people are engaged in actively defending our privacy.
When FERPA and PA1974 were enacted it wasn't a month before a liberty "permit" (driver licenses, i.e. a violation of the federal and every state constitution I've ever examined!) were explicitly exempted, and then the corrupt judges started hacking away, rendering both acts null without them actually being repealed. It was all done with legalistic sleight of hand:
Yes, we know that this state university is an agency of the state government, but I'm not going to consider it to be a government agency when looking at this bill aimed at reducing privacy violations by government agencies; but I am going to consider it to be a government agency when considering whether the chief perpetrators have "official immunity"... You get the idea.
P.S. This web interface for these comments is seriously defective! Open it up! Give us space to be able to see at least 10 lines (instead of 2) and maybe room for more than 30 characters across, FCOL! I can't even seen all of a simple sentence the way it is, so forget about checking grammar and spelling.
Your points are all valid, dlavie, but a couple of things.
Re: "Google is a voluntary freebie, you can choose not to use it."
That is factually accurate. But realistically, can people not use anything run by Google today without finding themselves seriously out of the loop or disadvantaged?
And about privacy, you're right that our private lives have been eroding for a long time. But now we live in a world where all of that information is online and accessible, in many cases it's searchable.
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Catch up on the week with one simple serving of Friday File. We've pieced together 10 interesting news bites you may have missed and put them together in bite-size morsels.
I've been excited by a few technology announcements, and bored by many, but Google's I/O announcement this week is the first where I found myself getting choked up and teary.
What's the prognosis for telehealth? Medical professionals have technologies they need; some state legislatures are enacting supportive laws, and both employers and employees tout the benefits. Yet other states have let proposals wither, insurers aren't sure how to charge for services, and physicians worry about liability and patient care.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
Based on reactions in Nicole's Newsfeed, everyone hates this version of Facebook. This should matter to Facebook now that there's a real competitor on the scene named Google+.
In the final episode of this series about the death of Internet anonymity, Saunders describes how the Internet of the future will start to attain a level of intelligence that requires no human intervention. Scary.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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