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Sergey Brin Says Facebook, Apple and Gov't Biggest Threats To Internet Freedom
An anonymous reader writes "Google co-founder Sergey Brin has listed three threats to Internet freedom: Facebook, Apple, and governments that censor their citizens. Brin's comments were made to The Guardian: '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.'"
Those just happen to be his competitors! What a crazy coincidence!
but, well, they could suck at it
i would add an additional item, and move it to the top of the list - companies that aim to track everything you do and aggregate that in one place. you could also add the gov't agencies that collude with them to track citizens. This would put FB and Goog tied at the top of the list. Not sure who is first, but they're both trying.
If Sergey Brin is lamenting Apple's restrictive iOS platform as a threat to internet freedom, then why not get to the root cause of that restrictiveness, which is malware? Spam and malware is a huge reason why companies and developers don't adopt an "anything goes" approach.
Also, I find it highly ironic that he would point to other companies facilitating censorship by various governments, but then doesn't mention Microsoft or Google itself, which largely went along with China's censorship in order to gain market share. Furthermore, it's not as if Google makes me feel more free in terms of the information I have access too. If anything, I am constantly worried about what information they have about me, who they might allow to see that information, and whether I'm leaving a data trail on their servers that the FBI can issue a subpoena for without my knowledge. Google's ubiquity and interconnectedness across all of its services poses a risk to internet freedom through its ramifications on user privacy.
So in short, Mr. Brin, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Seriously, how are Facebook and Apple threatening the freedom of the internet? Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.
Also, the other day I tried to sign up for a second Google+ account but it didn't like the names I was choosing because it didn't consider them "real" names. Seems a bit rich to be accusing others of limiting freedom.
The irony: this comes from a company that wants to know everything about you and shifted its entire strategy to compete with Facebook. A company currently facing DOJ and EU antitrust investigations. A company that just got fined $25,000 for obstructing an FCC investigation into Street View cars' Wi-Fi accidentally scraping personal messages and website visits.
Not to mention that Android is officially endorsed by the Chinese government as its mobile platform of choice (customized as Open Mobile System). You know, the government that has political opposition jailed, censors the Internet, and spies on its citizens in a way that makes the NSA look modest.
Look, Sergey, there are advantages to an open platform, but you're as much of a threat as the others.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but a coercive monopoly with guns is far worse than a mere merchant with a huge market share.
Infuriate left and right
Apple is worse than Microsoft ever was. And I am no fan of Microsoft.
But worse at what? The article title mentions that it is in regards to "internet freedom". From this perspective there is no comparing Apple to Microsoft - Apple pushes for standards and Microsoft attempted to lock users to Internet Explorer based technologies. Remember the days before OSX and Firefox - one would constantly run into sites that required IE and Windows.
I'm not going to try to defend Apple with regards to other issues, but you really can't compare them to Microsoft wrt "internet freedom". Microsoft is the only company I can think of that actually tried to monopolize the internet.
The summary is a summary of a ZDnet summation of a Guardian article.
If you actually read the Guardian article, the three things Brin lists as threats are:
He gives Apple and Facebook as examples of the third. Which the sensationalist media (including slashdot) twist around to try and incite a frenzy of condemnation.
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.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
apple and microsoft are flip sides of the same coin. both have supported censorship outright before changing their mind when it was a potential publicity disaster.
So I would indeed say that apple and microsoft are pretty much in the same boat entirely, yes.
Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.
Also, Apple is explicitly refusing to submit things like -webkit-text-size-adjust for standardization (they claim it's their "proprietary technology"),.
Oh, and the little bit about waiting until touch events were just about standardized in the W3C (without Apple's involvement, because they chose to not join the working group), then declare they have patents on the standard as written and they refuse to license them. Had they joined the working group, they would have had to disclose this much earlier in the
process, but it's in Apple's interest to have touch events working better in iOS than in web pages, so people create iOS-specific content and not HTML that works on all devices.
The result of all of which is that if you browse on a phone or tablet you constantly run into sites that require WebKit, and more often than not require Mobile Safari to render right.
Apple _does_ however try hard to make it _look_ like it's pushing for standards. I'll grant you that much. And it's not trying to monopolize the internet; just to slow down its development so it won't compete on a level playing field with iOS as an application delivery platform.
This, perhaps:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.network.tor.devel/1099
One of the replies points to the non-technical problem with Tor on iOS, which is that Apple rejected it from the App Store as being a "proxy or circumvention tool." This is not terribly surprising, of course: Apple would not want to anger governments by shipping a platform that allows iOS users to evade national firewalls.
Palm trees and 8
Microsoft is the only company I can think of that actually tried to monopolize the internet.
better think a bit harder.
every company wants the internet to themselves. Google was probably the first to really go for it, then Facebook try to make their own internet locked off from the prying eyes of search engines... who knows, maybe Pinterest and Twitter will ally and raise an army?
the problem is - internet users own the internet. it's the 20th/21st century's ultimate gift to individual freedom. of course, you can't monetize the "free" in freedom, but many will try.
as far as MS goes... you could always install whatever you liked on your machine. Apple is not following that business model. they started with iOS, and they're rapidly porting the walled garden to their desktops as well (as they become less relevant as tablets, phones, etc become the preferred browsing platforms).
let's see how far you get installing Firefox, Opera or Chrome on an iPad. ...and just like with nations, our freedoms are being taken away under the guise of improved security.
Well - is "freezing the market" into a form where anyone cal play; where you don't have to be one of a half dozen giants to be a content generator, or to write software, really freezing it?
Or, to put it another way ... if you say that the market will remain open (for even the current limited definition of open), as opposed to "evolving" into a truly locked and controlled market, is this a bad thing?
Check your premises.
Why do you still have yours?
I also don't own any Apple products, and have no plans to buy any in the future, either; I don't recommend anyone buy those, either.
I'd like to remind everyone that you don't need any of these things in your life in order to have a happy, productive life, and in my opinion you're more likely to have a happy, productive life if you don't have them. While you're at it, stop wasting money on cable and satellite TV, and smartphones and the overpriced data plans that they come with, too. Read more books, interact with more people in person, and go outside more often and move your bodies around. I can almost guarantee that these things will make your healthier and happier than what they're replacing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Correction, Apple pushes for locked standards (h.264 codec, anyone?). Pushing a standard isn't always inline with pushing towards a free and open internet if the standards require putting the implementors at the mercy of patent holders who may or may not choose to squeeze them for every dime they have.
If by "push for standards" you mean "lock in to proprietary iOS", then yes, Apples supports standards.
If you're talking about their recent retreat on IPv6 support, then no, Apple does not support standards.
Both Apple and Microsoft support standards when it suits their list of checklist customer requirements, and do their damndest to lock in their customer base once they've gotten sign-off on the initial deployment.
Hell, even companies like IBM, Oracle, Sybase, et. al. try to lock people and companies in with proprietary extensions to "standards" like JEE and SQL by providing unique add-ons their competitors don't have. It's the nature of business to try to keep your customers.
Some just play dirtier than others. And from what I see, Apple plays amongst the dirtiest of all, suing for "patent infringement" by competitors instead of negotiating patent agreements, while they try to lay claim to the most basic of user input metaphors that should never have been allowed to be patented in the first place.
I mean, seriously, what is so creative about using a finger gesture to unlock a phone or tablet? What is so mind-bogglingly complex about "stroke up" that it deserves a patent? What's next -- claiming that finger gestures are somehow inherently different than mouse gestures?
I better shut up now. I'm probably giving them ideas. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Aside from throwing mud at Google's competitors, he is deliberately mistaking Web for Web Search. A library is the books in it, not the book index, and some of the books are in the "restricted" area. So what?
the monopoly is accountable to you through your vote. it is an extension of your will, not an imposition of an alien will on you
in fact, if you were to remove the monopoly, there would be no absence of monopoly, the merchant would merely fill the power vacuum, and he isn't accountable to you. he's accountable to the quest for more profits, at any cost, including the raping of your freedom. then he buys the guns and points them at you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services,_Inc.
for the modern parable, see blackwater. what would blackwater become with no government already in place? the police, accountable to the corporation, not to you, which your real police department is
so your opinions and your views are illogical and historically wrong. they speak of a propagandized individual (corporate funded propaganda like fox news, the real threat to your freedom, not your government, which you VOTE for)
of course, where your government doesn't represent your will, it is because it is bought out by... corporate financial interests
heal YOUR government by removing the corporate infection, and understand the real threat to your freedom: the merchant you allude to
but make YOUR government your enemy, and see the corporate financial interests as harmless, and you are basically giving away your own hard won freedoms won by your forefathers (see pinkerton's above) to forces which have no interest in your freedoms at all, especially when your freedoms represent a threat to bottom line. then hiring goon sqwuads, with no government around to stop them, makes perfect capitalistic sense
there is your daily dose of anti-propaganda, i hope you aren't kneejerking too much right now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And what if you were referring to Apple's involvement in the calendaring (CardDAV, CalDAV) working groups? Multicast DNS (Bonjour)? How about HTTP live streaming? Is Apple perfect? No. Is Apple anywhere near as nefarious as Google or Rambus? No. At least with Apple I am their *customer*. With Google and Facebook, I'm the product.
The revolution will be mocked
As a matter of fact, Apple is a much smaller danger to Internet freedom than Google. :) )
A person can easily avoid using Apple products or systems (and save a ton of money while doing so). They are popular, but surely not mandatory. It is trivial to buy hardware and software that is not made by Apple (and most of the world still does
At the same time, it's very hard to escape Google tentacles. Large percentage of web sites (perhaps majority) use Google-provided webmaster tools to track visitors and send information back to Google. So, unless user employs fairly sophisticated tools and does so very consistently - the only way to avoid Google grasp is to use virtually no Internet at all (certainly not for web browsing of any kind). That's a pretty big threat if you ask me.
But hey, what's obvious facts vs. Sergey bashing some of his biggest competitors :)
Slashdot has fallen quite a bit for such a misinformed, rambling post gets modded insightful.
It really comes down to the founders of the companies. Microsoft has taken on the personality of Bill Gates - lacks imagination, cares more about money than good products, etc.
You're projecting a lot of MS's business practices onto Bill Gates, conveniently ignoring the other players. Someone who lacks imagination does not drop out of Harvard to start a new company that managed to revolutionize desktop computing.
Someone who cares more about money than good products would not start the Buffets-Gate Giving Pledge, and contribute significant portion of their wealth via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Apple has taken on the personality of Steve Jobs with a little bit of Woz thrown in - obsessive compulsive about solid products with good design, outwardly controlling but hacker friendly at heart.
OTOH, Steve Jobs cut all corporate charity programs after taking over in 1997.
While the original Apple products where hacker friendly, that certainly was not the case after Steve Jobs returned.
The reason Apple is kicking ass right now is because it does such a good job at constantly producing products that work well, look good, and don't change dramatically all the time. They may not have the highest specs at any given time but the user knows what to expect and that they can expect a pretty good device.
When people say Apple is evil it just tells me they don't own any Apple products and know nothing of Apple's history. They're usually wannabe nerds that can barely use anything other than Windows and usually they think their awesome at Linux because they've managed to install the flavor of the month baby distro. They think hacking is taking a device that was expressly made for being hacked and following step by step directions. Probably they have absolutely no sense of taste either - they think their Dell Inspiron One is comparable to an iMac.
This is a load of fanboy horseshit I'm not going to even bother debunking.
Let me summarise your piece here:
1. Microsoft & Bill Gates have no imagination and style. They make crappy products and only care about your money. (Almost a line verbatim from The Saviour(TM) himself).
2. Apple is wonderful and has the soul of Woz.
3. People who install Linux and install "the baby distro" (which is what, exactly? Some super easy to use Linux distro that does everything for you and doesn't need a CLI ever - coz that would be wonderful for the year of the linux desktop) are idiots.
4. People who follow HOWTOS are not smart.
5. Dell are ugly and Apple are beautiful.
Either you're a complete fanboy or you work for Apple marketing or are you just out of touch completely.
Apple hasn't had the soul of Woz since the early 80's. You might not have noticed but Apple is very, very concerned with making money and very, very concerned with not letting people "hack" their devices. They go out of their way to make jailbreaking difficult and every update tries to re-imprison jailbroken phones. Apple are in no way hacker friendly. Not even a little bit. Apple has the soul of Steve Jobs and if Bill Gates had no imagination and only cared about money then Steve Jobs had dreams only of destroying competition and being a total control freak.
I'm typing this on my MBA, btw. I'm not an Apple hater - but you're living in a dream world if you genuinely believe what you wrote above.
A Dell Inspiron is comparable to an iMac. A whitebox from your local PC shop is comparable to an iMac. All home computers are comparable to an iMac - that's why they're in competition with one another and that's why the iMac doesn't sell anywhere near as many as the Dells and the Whiteboxes.
The reason Apple is kicking arse right now is because they're selling completely (to the masses) unhackable appliance fashion devices, like iPods, iPhone and iPads - not because Apple Computer sales are up because they're still not really any higher than they've ever been.
If Google is the Disneyland of the whole internet why the f*ck I cannot access google/groups without a google account?
The FBI can never go bankrupt
Not technically true, for details see "Greece".
Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.
Also, Apple is explicitly refusing to submit things like -webkit-text-size-adjust for standardization (they claim it's their "proprietary technology"),.
Oh, and the little bit about waiting until touch events were just about standardized in the W3C (without Apple's involvement, because they chose to not join the working group), then declare they have patents on the standard as written and they refuse to license them. Had they joined the working group, they would have had to disclose this much earlier in the
process, but it's in Apple's interest to have touch events working better in iOS than in web pages, so people create iOS-specific content and not HTML that works on all devices.
Apple does have people working on CSS standards. They also have people working to patent the implementations to those standards too (pay attention to the patent applications--there's a surprise coming in the next six months or so).
Greece can go bankrupt because it is in the Eurozone and not in direct control of its own money supply. The U.S. can avoid bankruptcy by simply printing more dollars. That has ill effects, but it is not going bankrupt.
California could go bankrupt, but the FBI never will.
Apple pushes for standards? No, not really. For example, they're the only browser maker that does not employ _anyone_ to work on CSS specs. Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla all have employees doing so. Apple? Not so much.
Exactly. Google is on their own out there, without any help from Apple. Thank goodness they came up with WebKit to build Chrome wi...
Wait, what's that? WebKit is actually Apple's project? Apple encouraged web rendering standards compliance so much they actually help support Google in using their web renderer on a competing platform?
How very closed of them.
This attitude is our very own fault. Yes, ours. The fault of those that built the internet and thought it's a great idea to let everyone in.
We built a garden. A beautiful garden. We saw it was vast and lush and we started planting our seeds and grew trees and flowers and we thought it's great. Sure, some were better gardeners than others, but in general, we were happy to just watch it grow. And if someone wanted to plant himself and he didn't know how to, we were just happy to lend him a hand.
And we looked over our garden an we thought it's so great that the world should see it. Everyone should come in, they'd all start to plant something, people would take our seeds and grow something new out of them, think of the possibilities! We'll have plants we can't even imagine yet and we'll all share them and enjoy their fruits!
We thought that everyone would be like us.
Of course, there was the odd vandal. But they were few and far between, and we knew how to use our shovels not only to dig dirt but also graves for those trolls. They were a nuisance, but not really a threat. Besides, we knew how to build fences around our gardens if they grew too cocky. Sometimes, the fences were electric...
Time went by and people peeked into our garden. They thought it's neat, but then... they had no idea how to walk through it. It was so strange, no paths, no roads, and climbing over hedges ain't for everyone. They'd come, they said, but not if they had to cross-country hike to get from one field to the next. We agreed and we thought that it's maybe not the worst idea to build some paths, not only for them but also ourselves. It's easier to navigate that way, ya know? And that way we can also invite friends over who ain't so great gardeners. And maybe we can ease them in that way and get them to learn how to grow fruits, they'll love it.
So we thought.
But they weren't. They were mostly interested in the fruits. They went from garden to garden, picked some fruits, wolfed them down or just took a bite and threw the rest away... we were disgusted, but hey, who cares? There's plenty of fruit for everyone. Besides, we didn't really build that many paths to the patches under the camo net. Just sometimes we took a friend along there to ... relax. Ya know...
But free fruit? How dare you not make a buck from people wanting something! In came the corporations and they settled in our garden. But we didn't care too much, I mean, it's not like there ain't enough room for everyone. Sure, they take up a lot of room and a few of us had to move away because they muscled in, but we just rolled our eyes and moved aside. They won't stay for long anyway, we said, they'll soon figure out that there ain't a buck to be made in here, for we give our fruit away for free, why would anyone buy theirs?
In the meantime, the people we built the paths for, the non-gardeners, started to settle in. I mean, hey, it IS a nice place after all, so why not try to plant something themselves? Or at least take some fruits, place them somewhere and claim they grew them. We knew they couldn't, but hey, why bother complaining? We knew better, and nobody else counts, right? And if they got too cocky, we just went there and showed them who's boss in here. Someone barely able to wield a shovel has no chance to build a fence that could stand against an assault from us!
Of course, they could have learned to build fences. And we actually expected them to after we showed them that gardens are fragile if you cannot protect them. Instead, they cried foul and pointed at us, labeled us the bogeyman and yelled for the police to come and take us away, for we are a danger to them. The corporations were happy to chime in, after some of us who have been pushed away found out that their fences ain't worth the wood they were built of either. Now, in general that didn't really bother us at first, only when they started to peek under our camo nets it got a tad bit uncomfortable. It was kinda hard to explain what we grew th
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At its roots, WebKit is actually KHTML, part of KDE. It's a derivative of a GLP-licensed product. De-facto, it is *not* Apple's renderer.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
> You need a concrete example of Apple actually
> seeking to block web standards
I gave two concrete examples: -webkit-text-size-adjust and touch events.
They also volunteered to edit a few CSS specs (transitions, animations, transforms) and then did absolutely nothing. At this point other editors are working on it, but the specs won't be done until much later than otherwise; had Apple been honest that they had no plans to actually work on them, someone else would have picked them up much earlier.
They obviously can't _block_ standards forever, with the exception of patents they refuse to license (and in that situation the standard would be changed to work around the patent). But they're sure trying to make the sure the standards process is as slow as it can be in many cases.
> Which brings them no value.
Sure it brings them value. It keeps Google from forking WebKit. How is that not value for Apple?
> They ported to Windows, which doesn't really give
> them much.
They ported to Windows because they thought they would get something out of it (e.g. maybe market share for Safari on Windows).
A clip is not a user-serviceable part.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Libertarians are not the enemy of anyone except Big Brother. Their whole mantra is to leave people to their own devices.
You seem to think Big Business and Big Government are enemies of each other. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are the same, differing only in tiny squabbles which distract voters. The last thing either wants is for people to actually run their own lives and take the corporations to task.
If you actually think the coercive monopoly is going to use their guns to help people battle merchants, you are living in some weird alternate dream world. The only merchants who get in trouble are the few who don't go along with the other merchants and their government buddies.
That's the weirdest thing about Occupy Wall Street. They identify half the problem, corporations out of control, but then they refuse to see the other half, which is Big Brother actively assisting them. They are one and the same, and the government will never do anything to the 1% just because a few 99% rabble camp out in parks and shout for the government to come rescue them. Only individuals taking charge and upsetting BOTH Big Government and Big Business will solve anything.
Infuriate left and right
Webkit isn't Apple's project. WebKit was around for years before Safari came about - since 1998, when KHTML was released. It wasn't called WebKit until Apple forked it.
Yeah, that's right. It's successful because it forked from an Open Source project.
Ironically, Safari has always managed to languish behind the other WebKit based browsers in terms of actual functionality. Word has it that WebKit2 will likely just be a backport of features which have been in Chrome for some time...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I agree with Sergey. Facebook and other such sites represent the opposite of what the Internet was meant to be. Instead of creating an open facebook or twitter protocol for anyone to implement, they've closed it off and put a wall around their own little internet. Imagine the same was done in the early days; instead of SMTP we'd just have Hotmail. Instead of HTTP we'd have AOL. Eeeewww