Google co-founder Sergey Brin is worried about a future in which Apple and Facebook rule the Internet. If it was all about a desire for world domination, I’d say that’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black? But his critique goes further. His problem is that “the two companies threaten freedom and innovation on Internet,” according to an interview with the Guardian.Brin said, there were “powerful forces” at work worldwide against the open internet – including Apple and Facebook.“I am more worried than I have been in the past…It’s scary,” Brin said.
His problem with Facebook? It’s a closed network. In theory you can argue that there’s a threat to innovation. But the more obvious effect of Facebook being a closed network is that Google can’t get its hands on Facebook data. And maybe that’s also why Brin is upset.“There’s a lot to be lost,” Brin told the Guardian. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it.”
Google has been on the receiving end of criticism lately too. Opposite of Facebook, the technology giant was blasted for being a little too open with user data when it announced that Google+ profiles would be searchable as parts of a switch to “Search, plus your world” – a customized search experience that includes personal search results, like photos stored in Picasa, Google+ posts and results from Google+ circles.Critics claim that Google+ is an abuse of Google power since it shifts search results in favor of their own products. In effect, Google+ allows Google to get the type of social data that it would love to get from Facebook but via its own product.But by the time the first critic could cry wolf, consumers were met with an integrated advertising campaign called “Good to know,” designed to boost consumer confidence in Google’s handling of private data. In New York, the ads were as omnipresent as the Google beast itself.
