“I am more worried than I have been in the past.  It’s scary.”

That was what Google co-founder Sergey Brin stated about the state of Internet freedom during his interview with The Guardian.

Brin recalled how the openness of the internet decades ago enabled them to build Google into what it is today.  But the freedom of the internet as we know today may soon come to an end as threats ranging from certain national governments trying to control internet access of their people and the entertainment industry’s attempts to stop piracy, to the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, aim to take control of the Internet as well as its users.  Nowadays, it seems everyone has rules of their own.  And the problem with too many rules is stagnation.

“You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive,” Brin said. “The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”

Five years ago, it never crossed Brin’s mind that any government would be able to put restrictions on using the internet.  Now, he has to take a step back and swallow his words as he watch how governments are censoring the Internet from requiring the use of a real identity in creating a social networking profile to the introduction of a sealed, “national internet.”

Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, the 14 million-strong online activist network which has been providing communication equipment and training to Syrian activists, shared the same sentiments as Brin in stating that “We’ve seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realising the power of this medium to organise people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we’re seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world.”

Evil Facebook and Evil Apple?

But it’s not only restrictive governments that Brin warns against.  He also alerts people to the walled gardens of Facebook and Apple, which pose a lot of restrictions that controls user actions and freedoms.  Brin also didn’t hold back when it comes to Google and Facebook not being the best of internet buddies.

“Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years,” he said.

Google and Facebook’s rift started in 2010, long before there was Google+, when Google banned Facebook from accessing Gmail contacts by  tweaking the Terms of Service for its Google Contacts Data API.  The new ToS stated that Facebook had no access to Gmail contacts unless Google is allowed access to Facebook’s data.  So Facebook came up with a plan to go around Google’s back by importing Gmail contacts via an alternate Google feature.  In the end, Facebook removed support for importing Gmail contacts, leaving Facebook the clear winner as Google still didn’t gain access to Facebook’s data, though they made it difficult for Gmail users to add their Gmail friends on Facebook.  Yeah, Gmail users suffered because Google got greedy.

Protecting users’ data

As for the battle against piracy and taking down hackers, Brin is bothered by the fact that their company is being used by the US government to get information, since a lot of people’s data are on their servers.  Brin stated that they do their best to protect everyone’s data, but sometimes they are forced to hand over data and are legally restricted from informing the users that their data had been acquired by the government.

“We push back a lot; we are able to turn down a lot of these requests. We do everything possible to protect the data. If we could wave a magic wand and not be subject to US law, that would be great. If we could be in some magical jurisdiction that everyone in the world trusted, that would be great … We’re doing it as well as can be done,” Brin stated.

Brin’s rant emphasizes the evolution the web’s undergone since its early days, and even dates Google as the company that launched over a decade ago with the utopian goals of not being evil.  As Brin seeks to reshape his company into a more cohesive consumer service, he battles walled gardens in many more ways than he once did at the onset of Google, which came out the gates fighting for access to the web’s burgeoning collection of content.