Google’s Sergey Brin: China, SOPA, Facebook Threaten the ‘Open Web’ | Hacker News Reader

Google’s Sergey Brin: China, SOPA, Facebook Threaten the ‘Open Web’

wired.com

44 pointsespeed39 comments

Open articleView on HN

To Google:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

threatens their ability to index and serve ads against the open web, which is really what they mean.

Not really.

robots.txt has always been based on a good faith.

All the reputable companies abide by it, but I don't doubt for a second they'd stop reading it if it started affecting their bottom line.

You can also actively reject the GoogleBot

True, but GoogleBot's user agent isn't set in stone.

I think Brin confuses "closed" and "mature". Internet in 2012 is more accessible than in 1998 in spite of all these extra regulations, because there is so much more information available and tools are so much better.

If this data is so valuable, and Google makes enormous revenue out of it, why shouldn't they pay for it?

Really, Sergey? Isn't Google a little... young to pull the whole "My inability to compete with a competitor makes them a force for evil" card?

They must be in worse shape than I'd guessed.

Eh, then again, at 14 years old, it's about time for the crustiness to start setting in. I guess it shouldn't come as a shock.

Sergey is nothing more than a hypocrite. Get back to me when Google:

  1) Makes its search engine algorithm publicly available.
  2) Stops distorting its search results to favor those with Google Plus content.
  3) Stops allowing Android apps to be created.
  4) Stops releasing proprietary technologies e.g. WebM, WebP.

Then you can talk about how Apple and Facebook are bad for the "open" internet.

Agreed on your first two. I don't understand either of the second. Native app markets are not necessarily a threat to the open internet... only ones that are locked-down "walled gardens." And WebM and WebP are openly licensed specs.

Open specs controlled by one company are only kind of open, especially when they can iterate the spec faster than smaller competitors can keep up. Here's a doomsday scenario with WebM. Google 1) updates the spec, 2) releases a new version of Chrome, and 3) transcodes all the videos on Youtube to the new format. The question becomes, can Google accomplish those three things faster than Apple/Microsoft/Mozilla can release updated browsers? The spec is open, even the source is open, so all you have to do is recompile and push an update to all your users whenever Google says so if you don't want them to see the "Your browser is obsolete" warning message.

Is this seriously something people think would happen? Wouldn't the internet at large be up in arms at Google for this kind of behavior?

Like I said, it's a sort of doomsday scenario. Then again, I've seen comments here on HN calling IE obsolete specifically because it didn't implement some HTML5 subspec that had been updated less than 48 hours before. It's hard to predict what will or will not enrage the internet.

While a horde of zombies voted you down I quite agree with that point of view.

Even if it's not as black & white Google already attempts a lot of this. They basically want to be the ones to decide.

There's no "consortium" it's just "lets push feat ZZ on our websites, web clients, and say its the new feat everyone has to support. Plus its open source anyway we're the good guys!"

If others disagree well, so far it's been pretty much a grey area. Google keeps pushing the technologies others refused. But when Google controls even more of the market, let's say with 50%+ Chrome (they have the market already, website wise, except for FB.), there won't be a need to push anymore. It'll be Google's way or, well, nothing. Even if it's features that are released within 48H.

This is absurd scenario on top of infeasbily-expensively-absurd scenario. Google has no desire to do this, it would completely fly in the way of WebM's original goals. Further, the idea that YouTube could retranscode content in any sort of timeline like that...

It's from the article, "Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”"

When you run the second biggest app market in the world it makes you sound like just a bit of a hypocrite.

And my issue with WebM/WebP is that Google just seems to release these standards with a complete disregard for what the rest of the industry is doing or has done.

True openness happens when you have established open standards that everyone uses.

> It's from the article, "Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”"

He didn't say that though. It seems like Wired added the Apple part. The only quote in the Guardian article (which I don't think includes the full interview, unless I'm missing the link), just says '"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."' Which in most cases is a true statement.

> And my issue with WebM/WebP is that Google just seems to release these standards with a complete disregard for what the rest of the industry is doing or has done.

You only see the "established open standards that everyone uses" when you ignore the long painful sausage-making process.

  > "For example, all the information in apps – that data is
  > not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."' 
  > Which in most cases is a true statement.

Is it? Not crawlable does not mean non searchable. Google cannot crawl my messages too (I hope so!), but I can search in them.

Yes, and private messages should remain private (and hopefully searchable). Balkanized data isn't necessarily bad, and there are lots of shades of grey there.

As two examples, though, if the only way to search Twitter is Twitter, and Twitter won't let you search for tweets older than a week or two, then you're out of luck.

More hypothetically, if most people used Wordpress for blogging for the last 15 years, and Wordpress didn't allow indexing by search engines, but only searching on Wordpress.com, we would not have the internet we have today.

"You can't search it" isn't entirely true for Android apps. Android has had a pluggable search framework for quite some time (I think since 1.x, but I'm not 100% sure about that). It is straightforward for apps to respond to searches on your phone and some do, though like some of Android's other extension points, more should.

the beauty of it is that if you don't like Google, it provides interfaces and APIs to extract your data in standard formats. You can export emails, contacts, calendar stuffs, docs, etc.

Facebook allows none of this. Once you're in, you're stuck there.

Well, apart from the whole "Download Your Information" thing that lets you download all your data, you're totally right.

Great, I'll provide instructions to users of my app on how to initiate this (IIRC) manual process that requires them to navigate a maze of FB privacy pages, confirm via email that yes, they do actually want their data, and then they can wait for the request to be processed by FB. Then they get emailed a zip file full of multiple files with everything they've ever done. Hardly the same as APIs that allow you to export the things you want, on-demand, in a documented format, seamlessly into alternative applications.

Cool. Please by all means show me how to get a list of my circles from Google Plus ?

Because last time I checked their API was very, very basic.

https://www.google.com/takeout/

Your initial comment would have been a lot more credible if you'd said exactly that.

That's hysterical. Have you ever clicked it? Yes. Enjoy that 50MB HTML file downloaded.

What a load of rubbish.

1) Google provides NO API for extracting all my data from Google Plus.

2) Facebook has a download my information link in the Preferences panel.

The API is anemic, but as jmillikin noted in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3846020 the data liberation has been there since launch. I hadn't used takeout before, but I just tried downloading my circles and got a zip of vcard files.

https://www.google.com/takeout

What interest could you have in their search algorithm? Or should I say, why should they disclose it? It would only allow SEO spammers to game the system so much easier. This would fill the top results with crap so I would think it's in everyone's best interest that the algorithm is kept secret. Also the quality results are what separates Google from the competition. Are trade secrets not allowed anymore?

I personally do not want my FB or any semi-private account indexed by Google and shown with tens of of "Is he a child molester, do a background check" type ads. It sucks for Google but that's life. A lot of FB /Apple data is searchable, by visiting Facebook and Apple. If I want it on the open, I'll post it on a blog

You are screwed then, because it's indexable by both Facebook and Microsoft(Bing), they can abuse your data the same way Google or <insert any other company> here. You get zero security, zero privacy compared to posting this on a public blog and Facebook gets monopoly over your data, which can open it up for even more abuses.

I think you are confusing the issue. I am not posting the Coca Cola recipe on FB expecting it to be private. But it's still a greater degree of privacy than having it indexed and merged with other info Google may have. Think of saying something about your neighbor to another neighbor vs posting it on a newspaper.

There's no monopoly since I can delete it and eventually FB will have to delete it too (now they hide it instantly). Not so on Google or when snippets are posted over and over again in blog after blog.

> But it's still a greater degree of privacy than having it indexed and merged with other info Google may have.

Sorry but I fail to understand the logic here: If you put something on a blog or whatever, it's indexable by Google and other search engines, if you put it on Facebook, it's indexable by Facebook and it's partners.

If you post your data on Facebook it's searchable on Facebook(unless probably if it's marked private, that way it's only used for advertising), so basically if I want to add your data to my results, I just have to search twice, which is inconvenient but I wouldn't call it privacy. Heck I could probably write browser extension in a day that does this automatically.

> indexed and merged with other info Google may have

Facebook has your personal connections and a subset of your browser history, what can Google add to that to make it even creepier?

FYI: Bing incorporates the Facebook data, they have permission from Facebook, which means you have precisely zero extra security on Facebook.

But let's talk about security: do you really think your private stuff are really private on Facebook? If you want to control access to stuff, you are better off hosting a blog on a private server on an encrypted drive, that way your private info is really private.

> There's no monopoly since I can delete it and eventually FB will have to delete it too (now they hide it instantly).

You seem to confuse monopoly with consumer rights or control. If Facebook holds 90% of the social data in the world, it's a monopoly, period. Monopolies are illegal because they have the power to abuse. Also your deleted picture won't be hidden instantly, it will probably linger on a CDN for years to come. :)

> Not so on Google or when snippets are posted over and over again in blog after blog.

Are you implying that I can't copy paste your facebook post and repost it over and over again?

So much ink spilled....for nothing. Share with: Just me > Friends > Groups I create > Friends of Friends > Everyone

Lots of leeway. I specifically said that nothing I post there is secret, but I'd rather confine whatever I post to the group. The power is not as much in individual posts but on the ability to piece together sites I visits, searches, "friends" I have, what type of emails I get etc etc.

When I delete a picture or comment, no doubt it will linger somewhere in backups but unless the FBI is looking for it's unlikely to be shown.

You can copy my Facebook post if you see it. Scrappers for example will not and there is no way to link to it since almost all people will not see it.

The real enemy of "Open Web" for Google are those Safari users that refuse third party cookies :) http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/17/google-under-fire-for-circu...

So what you're saying is that my Facebook data is visible in Bing? Do you have a link?

Facebook doesn't provide a way to search for other users based on content on their page and AFAIK neither does Bing.

Do you have some evidence for this ?

How is that the concern? That's not what Google is wanting or arguing for.

Iroonnyyyyyy

>> “If we could be in some magical jurisdiction that everyone in the world trusted, that would be great,”

Take your servers, move to Iceland.

Uh, no! They have laws protecting personal data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com