Google's Sergey Brin: Open Internet is threatened

Source.

The interview with Sergey Brin: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin

 

Google is worried about Google, really. Sure, they've taken up arms against the more hardcore measures like SOPA. But, these are the same people harvesting and storing up data like squirrels going after food for the winter. They call out Facebook, but really they're no different from each other. They call out government, yet continue to feed data to said governments either freely or when their feet are held to a fire 5 minutes too long.

They don't take issue judging the sinners, but they are no saints. Lastly, they ought to look at their own foot wounds before commenting on any shooting going on.

 

Yeah I agree, hypocrisy is maybe the wrong word for Google, but they have their own problems anyway.

 

I saw a number of important points IMO:

- Online information in Facebook's apps is not crawlable by web crawlers;

- Facebook doesn't offer an official method to export your Facebook's contacts, for example. The stated reason is "to protect privacy". But there are unofficial methods that may work;

- When Brin said: "...people will continue to download pirated content as long as it is easier to acquire and use than legitimately obtained material..."
This reminded me of some kinds of DRM-restricted music (like the ones that used to come from Nokia Ovi Music store). By simply removing the DRM you can be "pirating".

- When Brin said: "...Google is periodically forced to hand over data and sometimes prevented by legal restrictions from even notifying users that it had done so..."
I really believe him on this one. "Patriot Act" comes to mind.