Sergey Brin: Facebook and Apple a threat to Internet freedom

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57414316-93/googles-sergey-brin-facebook-and-apple-a-threat-to-internet-freedom/

by gamebit07 • 14 years ago

88 104 14 years ago

news.cnet.com

dotcoma• 14 years ago

Oh, and, incidentally, to Google, too ;-)

trevelyan2• 14 years ago

For a counterpoint, my company is one of the larger players in our field measured in terms of user numbers, but we have zero visibility in Google on anything but brand searches. We survive in part thanks to decent visibility through Apple and Facebook where word-of-mouth recommendation actually works because the recommendation networks are human-powered.

If the aim is promoting a healthy online ecosystem, Google is a greater threat to startups than either Apple or Facebook in the sense that it is heavily biased against new entrants, and encourages a competitive equilibrium in most markets which encourages the gaming of its search algorithms by actors working in bad faith. Google meanwhile insists that the ranking problems of good sites are the fault of webmasters rather than its own problems measuring site quality, focus and user engagement.

The problem here is with Google, not with Facebook or Apple.

maxiparla• 14 years ago

It's so easy to blame others for our failures. If Google's unable to capitalize on their social strategy with G+, they better get back to the drawing board and stop blaming companies that simply have a different business model than theirs.

etherealG• 14 years ago

I think what Brin is highlighting here is a problem in those 2 companies. Mentioning other problems that Google itself has doesn't take away from those companies having openness issues. Please stay on topic.

magicalist9• 14 years ago

Huh? Yes, google is the usual way that people search for sites on the internet, but in the end it's just an index and search engine for other people's content.

You've posted before about your troubles with SEO and google, but remember that ranking is inherently unfair, and there's no reason that new entrants should have any ranking advantage just because they are new. Word of mouth is also heavily biased against new entrants but there is no bad actor there.

I still think there's no such thing as a perfect ranking algorithm. There is an argument here about the internet becoming ossified, but it's not clear to me that google is being an active bad actor here.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Google is not just an index and search engine for other people's content.

It also provides a range of services e.g. news, maps, social networking which it preferentially sorts above others. If you were trying to compete in these markets you would be at a disadvantage.

trevelyan2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I understand your point. I was just trying to point out what I think is obvious to a lot of founders but was missing from the article: right now both Facebook and Apple offer a much better distribution channel than Google for products and services that compete on merit and word-of-mouth.

As long as Google is putting sites with no word-of-mouth or inbound links on its front page and positioning itself as a champion of the imperiled developer, I don't see what is wrong with developers pointing out that Facebook and Apple are in fact more supportive. There are much greater and more opaque barriers to getting traffic from Google than from either Apple or Facebook.

If Google wants a healthier Internet, it should figure out how it is contributing and retarding the dynamism of the sector. As is, this piece is feel-good self-puffery and Sergey and the Guardian deserve to be called out on it.

nextparadigms2• 14 years ago

You can get your website recommended the same you get your app, through word of mouth. I don't understand the difference.

skrebbel• 14 years ago

Pot, kettle?

All popular internet services used to be designed in a distributed fashion, with no central servers, no single point of failure and no single organization to tell you whether you get access or not.

Then came Google.

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

Did you have something in mind for how a modern design of such systems would work?

philwelch• 14 years ago

The better question is, why are people wasting their time trying to invent a federated Facebook instead of a federated Google? People already have lots of ways to share pictures of their cats. But they only have one way to find information on the internet, and if the people running that monopoly did something like compromise the quality of that service to promote their sharing-cat-pictures product, we'd be screwed.

hristov• 14 years ago

You can still get access to the internet without Google. I do not get your point.

epistasis• 14 years ago

Search is a popular internet service, of which Google is the primary, and for most people, only entry point. Unlike other internet services, such as Usenet or the web or email, there's a single actor that controls the vast majority of search. What's more, this actor will arbitrarily stop listing legitimate websites without explanation, they maintain little to no customer service force to deal with the cases where they mess up, and they seem to not care whatsoever.

redthrowaway5• 14 years ago

AOL preceded Google by a large margin, and was much, much worse for the Internet. Google has its problems, but it has been by far a net positive.

talentdeficit• 14 years ago

google have slowly been rebuilding AOL's walled garden for five years now. if anything, they're jealous apple and facebook beat them to it

bluethrowaway2• 14 years ago

AOL predates the modern commercial internet. Heck, the first HTTP spec came out 8 or so years after the company started and in the same year they named themselves America Online. Picking on them for not grokking the internet is a bit facile for my liking.

michaelpinto• 14 years ago

You know who I feel sorry for? Microsoft -- who doesn't even rate as being a threat to the internet...

pyre2• 14 years ago

Well, Gates did feel that this whole 'Internet' thing was a fad. They're preparing to be a major player in the post-Internet era.

jsemrau• 14 years ago

Might be that the joke went over my head, but can you specify post-Internet ?

kijin• 14 years ago

Was Microsoft ever a serious threat to the open Internet? At worst, they gave us IE6.

Poor MS has even lost its Archenemy of Free Software badge to Apple.

justincormack• 14 years ago

There was MSN, which was a walled garden that did not even run IP.

pwpwp• 14 years ago

"First thing I'd say to Brin, if you're sincere in your concern for the open web, why aren't you leading it?" -- Dave Winer

https://twitter.com/#!/davewiner/status/191579280034103296

nullflux• 14 years ago

Winer put this whole debate succinctly.

Hypocritical comments like this often seem to stem from one of two things: a desire to drum up needless press conflict or a complete lack of self-awareness. Perhaps Google has gotten the best of itself and in their all-consuming "must be, er, kill Facebook" dogma not realized that they are likely more a threat to privacy and openness as those they criticize.

Tyrannosaurs2• 14 years ago

The problem may essentially be that Brin is now too close to the whole situation to see the problem as it really is, that in his head what's right for Google and what's right for the internet are too closely linked.

Obviously there are two things here regardless of who you are - what you think is "good for" the internet and what you think is helping and hindering it. Brin's view is predicated on a particular view of the first point - what's good for the internet which is (for obvious reasons) very similar to Google's own view.

But any view on what's helping and what's hindering has to be viewed in terms of what you actually see as good for the internet.

mvasilkov2• 14 years ago

"You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive."

Applies to Google just as well. The more they talk, the more disrespect they earn, seriously.

When Android companies like HTC, Samsung were on a losing side of patent litigations, Google claimed "patents are wrong, hurt innovation" -- and look at the very same people squeezing every last dollar out of their patent portfolio now, when they have some.

Announcing Google+? "Sharing on the web is broken". Yeah, right.

Now this, too. IMO Google poses much more substantial threat to the Interwebs than Apple, while also being 20% more assholes.

mkjones• 14 years ago

> Google claimed "patents are wrong, hurt innovation" -- and look at the very same people squeezing every last dollar out of their patent portfolio now, when they have some.

How is Google squeezing every last dollar out of their patent portfolio? By defensively protecting themselves against offensive patent suits?

mvasilkov2• 14 years ago

Since you're on Hacker News, I believe in your ability to search the web (using Google or otherwise).

> defensively protecting themselves

Not everyone agrees with your point of view, to say the least:

http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/02/after-apple-microsoft-als... http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/03/eu-opens-two-antitrust...

rsynnott3• 14 years ago

They probably mean Motorola's extremely aggressive behaviour; the two high-profile Motorola suits aren't defensive, in that Motorola sued first. The Apple one was initiated long before the Google acquisition, and is thus nothing much to do with Google (though Google have said they'll continue to look for the frankly insane terms Motorola wants); however, the Microsoft one was initiated during the acquisition process; it'd be normal for Google to have some control over litigation at this point.

twelvechairs• 14 years ago

Despite everyone else seemingly being on the opposite side here, I agree with Brin.

Google allow you basic functionality over your own data with them, such as the freedom to migrate to other services, which Facebook and Apple restrict (and profit from).

And he is right that when companies horde user information and then control access to it (for profit) rather than provide it freely, it stifles innovation [though Google themselves do a little of this too].

I'm sure that Google could be doing a lot more to screw everybody's personal information for profit if they chose to, but they dont because they have at least some respect for the common user (though they are not perfect either).

Also, as a side issue, the original (guardian) article is very poor in the sense that the journalist imposes their own narrative on top of what Brin is saying.

diminish• 14 years ago

I agree, new start-ups like mine (or Pinterest, Google) benefit from an open web. however all of them/us after going strong, we want to create a walled garden. Assuming that openness wins at the end, the whole idea is to keep the openness as a feature not as a starting point.

magicalist9• 14 years ago

The original guardian article is pretty poor (not much of an "interview", it's pretty much just a regular story with a few quotes from Brin in it), but both the Wired article and this cnet article are really playing up the Facebook/Apple thing (and maybe that's why those stories are on the front page and the guardian article isn't). Notice, for instance, no mention of Facebook or Apple before the "it's scary" quote in the guardian article, but cnet makes it seem like he's referring specifically to them when he said that.

On your larger point, I have to agree. If you think about preserving a universally accessible, open web, balkanized data in proprietary app datastores and a privately controlled internet within the internet are definitely two big threats (of course, China's censorship and Iran shutting down internet access and making their own are probably bigger threats, but that doesn't make for page views).

Private data should remain private, but requiring a particular app, or a Facebook account, or a google+ account, to view what is supposed to be public content does actively work against the open web.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Can we please stop with the misinformation.

As it stands today. Facebook has more complete APIs and is much easier to get your data from them than Google+.

And don't forget that Google makes significantly more profit from its users than Facebook does.

chrisbroadfoot• 14 years ago

> Facebook has more complete APIs and is much easier to get your data from them than Google+.

Can you please quantify this?

danmaz742• 14 years ago

There is a real threat, but Google could answer to it in a much better way: By positioning Google Plus as "the open web alternative to Facebook". To do so, they should make G+ the identity/social graph platform on which third parties want to base their own services instead of FB connect. I'm sure they could do that, because Google can profit from people going around in the web, while FB needs to keep people as much as possible inside its walled garden.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like G+ is moving towards that direction.

magicalist9• 14 years ago

It would be nice, though it would be even better if we could settle on a more federated model (like Mozilla's BrowserID).

The lack of success with previous federated ID systems isn't encouraging, however.

alastair• 14 years ago

I find this funny considering you need to login with a google account to view public Google+ posts (even though they appear in the SERPs).

lomegor• 14 years ago

When did that happened? I can access public posts without being logged in with no problem.

Facebook, on the other hand, tells me that I can't continue if I don't log in (although I can just cancel the message, and continue reading).

magicalist9• 14 years ago

There was a thread a while ago with a google engineer taking bug reports on this. At the time both iOS and Android browsers were redirecting to a login page (on Android you could request the desktop version of the page and it wouldn't prompt you to log in). Since then you no longer get redirected on Android, but maybe it hasn't been fixed in mobile safari?

cpg• 14 years ago

Or go through a redirection page for most of the top Google search results. Just a matter of time before that starts to be further tweaked.

bookwormAT• 14 years ago

Sure, let's all kill the messenger, he has selfish intentions. But let's also consider the message.

There would be no Wikipedia today if Microsoft would have control over its ecosystem back then in the way Apple does today.

Wikipedia was a direct competitor to one of Microsofts Products. They would have simply rejected it to make us buy Microsoft Encarta on DVD.

There would probably be no internet at all. Don't fight Netscape or Firefox. Just reject them.

Xuzz2• 14 years ago

I'm sure that with Apple's declining and certainly minority market share in one form of computing (cell phones), that would be the biggest issue here? When the web is fully accessible on these devices, and something like Wikipedia can and was created there?

mehuln• 14 years ago

He may have a valid point to certain extent regarding a controlling nature of those two firms, but if I look at last 10 years, I see more innovation out of Apple than Google, and even in it's controlled way Apple through iOS has driven more innovation (Instagram?)

Some of you may be a fan of Apple but I do not think one can deny the quality of innovation that has come from Apple vs. lack there from Google. I am talking about innovation that change the way we live.

padolsey• 14 years ago

Supposed innovation doesn't excuse what they're being accused of here.

rbarooah10• 14 years ago

All they seem to be being "accused" of is not giving data for free to Google to sell advertising against.

martythemaniak• 14 years ago

Really? Google circa 2002 had nothing but the search engine. You call Gmail, maps, youtube, docs, analytics, cal and Android "lack of innovation"?

magicalist9• 14 years ago

how is that at all relevant?

m_eiman• 14 years ago

How is Apple a threat to the open web? They don't even DO web... At worst they make it possible to write (walled in) native clients that perform better than a browser for specific tasks.

namsral5• 14 years ago

On the contrary I think Apple has had a possitive effect on the web:

1. Most of those native clients use public Web-APIs

2. The iOS platform was one of the kick-starters to get rid of the closed Flash environment

3. And one of the kick-starters for better video standards, h264

Maybe Brin mentioned Apple to generate more headlines.

2muchcoffeeman• 14 years ago

Further, I don't think they are interested in controlling it because it's really really hard. Their web strategy has been to push open standards. They can't reasonably curate it or control it in any meaningful way. So they probably want to level the playing field and then deliver the best possible experience they can.

nextparadigms2• 14 years ago

So your biggest argument that Apple is pro-web is that instead of choosing a proprietary plugin they chose a proprietary codec? That's not a very big improvement at all, at least not in terms of "openness", though it is an improvement in performance.

Still if they really wanted to support an open web, they'd support WebM.

kamaal6• 14 years ago

Aha! Ever heard of a thing called Siri?

Siri is shifting importance from 'search' to 'finding information' + many other things.

Google knows this damn well, 'search' and 'finding information' are really two different things. As things move on from text based search. Voice based, image based search are really going to be very important in the future.

No doubt apple is being perceived as a threat.

conradfr2• 14 years ago

Do people really use Siri (except to demo it) ?

rsynnott3• 14 years ago

While that might or might not be viewed as a threat, it's nothing to do with the "open web" one way or the other.

Tyrannosaurs2• 14 years ago

I believe the idea is that Apple encourage apps which forces data into proprietary silos rather than leaving it on the web in forms that might are potentially more open.

It's a fair (though hardly killer) point but if he was really going to push it that hard he might need to explain away Google's own app store, the second largest one on the web I believe.

namsral5• 14 years ago

I think Brin is being somewhat of a hypocrite.

User data should roam freely between services and shouldn't be locked-in.

But asking Facebook and Apple to open-up their core products is like asking Google to publish their search algorithm or publish the profiles of all their advertisers.

gbog• 14 years ago

> asking Facebook and Apple to open-up their core products is like asking Google to publish their search algorithm

Nobody ask Facebook to open-source their algorithm or other fabrication secrets. What we should be asking them is to allow users to choose to open doors in the walls.

I, as a Facebook user, would much prefer getting the few baby pics I receive there from some friends directly into any "social content client" of my choice. I wrote something about it there: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104035200377885758362/posts/EWjN...

I am no Apple product user, but if I was I would require Apple to allow me to have full ownership on the files I store on the gadget, and I would require to be allowed to install manually any app I choose to install, however "harmful" it may be to my user experience.

namsral5• 14 years ago

Maybe I haven't been clear enough.

> Nobody ask Facebook to open-source their algorithm or other fabrication secrets.

No, but Google isn't interested in algorithms. Facebook's main asset are user profiles and Google wants to use them free of charge in order to sell more ads. No sane company is going to share its main asset with other companies, let alone free of charge.

Now Google is playing the "everything should be open" card to make Facebook and Apple look bad and force them to share their main asset. But has Google opened-up their main asset?

Unless they open-up their search algorithm, Google's main asset, they shouldn't be blaming other companies for not being open.

That's why I think Brin is a hypocrite. And user data should be free to roam despite everyone's stance.

kamaal6• 14 years ago

Openness and freedom are really subjective terms to people.

The common person doesn't give two hoots about all this. Just like how we don't give a damn about openness in the design of car or a truck engine or the chemical composition of engine oil.

I don't get this cry at all. Your data was never personal. The day you used your cell phone your location could be tracked and was tracked I suppose(Even if for merely billing reasons). The day you shopped you were giving away information on your buying habits, spending trends and contributing data to larger data sets used by corporates. All that happened by merely using a credit card.

Nearly everything related to a person is track-able.

But do you know what is bigger threat today? Its massively big monopolies controlling everything about a particular business like online advertising, payments and access to information(search).

According to me that is a bigger threat. Coming to openness of computers in terms of hack ability. For a common man a computer is no different compared to a washing machine. And people don't tear down their washing machines to hack on it. Just like how we don't hack our cars and mixer grinders.

And there is basically nothing wrong with that.

conradfr2• 14 years ago

After having my Google account suspended because I made a stupid mistake when creating a YOUTUBE account, and all my appeals (with my ID) denied until I chose to have my CC charged (what would happen if I had an Android ? ).

After having my Adsense banned without warning, with money cancelled and no (real) appeal feasible.

It opened my eyes and I really want to move away from Google more than Facebook (which has only stupid data about me) or Apple (which I don't use any product).

I use more than 10 Google services that are somewhat critical to me and now that I have the feeling that it can be blocked anytime it has become very uncomfortable.

TomAnthony• 14 years ago

Google could also be more open:

- They introduced 'rel author' HTML attribute to assign authors to web-content. Despite being an OpenID provider, they only allow you to 'verify' with a Google+ profile. This doesn't feel much like the 'open web'.

- Google+ isn't crawlable from the outside. (just like Facebook isn't).

- The Facebook API allow a user to 'connect' with a site so they can pass data back and forth. Google+ does not.

- Google search now strips your search term from the referrer header so webmasters cannot analyse the data. They state privacy as the reason, yet will sell you the data if you pay via Adsense!

Google are great company, who have done some awesome stuff and been a positive force for the internet. However, since Page took the helm they seem to have changed direction somewhat.

shadowmatter• 14 years ago

Kinda sick of hearing this. I mean, you've been able to download an archive of everything you've posted to Facebook for awhile now. The Facebook APIs are way more built-out than the Google+ APIs. And here are like a billion other web sites out there that only make information available after logging in and so also qualify as walled gardens, but apparently aren't worthy of criticism.

Meh.

spot2• 14 years ago

you can't download/export your social graph.

rbarooah10• 14 years ago

Brin acknowledges that the data is valuable. It belongs to other people. Google makes enormous revenue from it. Perhaps it's time for them to start paying for it.

intended6• 14 years ago

How?

Also, remove google, let's say they collapse, then what? new altavistas? Bings?

And we should now have them pay websites to let them index them?

So that those websites can be found and hence survive?

Isn't google helping those people by letting people find the data in the first place?

rbarooah10• 14 years ago

I didn't say anything about removing Google. That's a bit of a strawman.

We're not talking about marginal websites that, by your reasoning are dependent on Google for survival.

We're talking about businesses that have accumulated large amounts of valuable data such as FaceBook. The value of being searchable through Google is clearly not enough to persuade them to provide access to their data.

Integration is worth more to Google than it is to Facebook. When this situation arises in business, often the one who values the resource more makes a deal that involves paying money to the one who has the resource they want.

xcirrian• 14 years ago

I think this title is not what Brin was saying. He said government, Apple and Facebook are threats to the 'Open Web'. The web and the internet are totally different things.

rjzzleep• 14 years ago

and google is not?

Hoff• 14 years ago

Am I missing something here? All the pontifications around threats to Internet Freedom and the oft-referenced perils of walled gardens aside, where is Google going here? Where's the revenue?

How is Google going to compete going forward, and with what? With Google+? Google Wallet? GMail? Google Play? Google Glasses? Are these offerings growing (fast) enough to support Google? How do they recoup their investments in these and other projects?

What will Google do as the search market becomes increasingly commoditized and specialized and, yes, fragmented? The ever-present walled gardens are just one part of this. It appears likely that the flagship Google apps and services will become increasing commoditized, and available from existing providers such as Rackspace and Amazon, or entrants such as HP Cloud and Microsoft Windows Azure? By providers that might choose to offer better customer support, for instance.

How is Google going to continue to provide a platform for their advertisements, when queries are being fed (from apps and tools and walled gardens) more directly to specific (and tailored) hosts and search engines; with queries directly connected into Yelp, LinkedIn, Wolfram Alpha?

How are they going to recoup their investments in the Android platform? Chrome? With their investments in browser search boxes?

Certainly this whole effort involves speeches and press releases and related marketing, but I don't see the platforms and the updates and the new sources of revenues that the Google folks need to be investing in; not at the scale that they need to maintain themselves. Walled gardens have and will continue to happen and tech markets can and will fragment, particularly if the results cater to the end-users and provide sufficient the revenues for the vendors.

TL;DR: What's Google doing about their risk for disintermediation?

rbarooah10• 14 years ago

Now that they've shown everyone how valuable data is, probably the only thing they can do is to start to pay for it and take a hit to profitability.

Sergey Brin: Facebook and Apple a threat to Internet freedom

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