[tferris]

Imagine Apple, Facebook or whoever controlled the Internet like Google does:

How long would it take until they abused their power?

If someone is dominating the web it's Google and looking at their power and how much traffic they move—their actions feel balanced and neutral compared to any other player.

[rbarooah]

Part of what has put Google in their position as the gatekeeper is that the perception of being balanced and neutral. If search was more overtly biased, Bing would step in as the neutral player.

The more they consolidate their power, the less they seem constrained by this. I don't see anything that fundamentally distinguishes google from these other companies other than their present strategic position.

[tferris]

Sorry, I don't get your point.

You can be successful with your product on the WWW without employing any Google services, being totally independent. If people and other sites like you and link back to you your traffic will quickly skyrocket—which feels natural. You are not obliged to use any Google service like GA. Just use the Internet and its open standards and you are ready to go because Google left the Internet's core like it is and didn't build a walled garden around it. That's the great thing about the web: it's decentralized and everybody can contribute, Google haven't tried to change this. That's why I don't like the native app trend with the appstore, all the innovation the Internet brought us are vanished by one central and strict entity and nobody cares, Android at least tries to emulate some parts of the net (i.e. by using intents, allowing multiple appstores, with the open nature of Android, etc.), Google is regarding their marketplace Play much more relaxed than Apple.

Looking at the Appstore or the Facebook API, there are so many rules which don't follow any of the core principles of the Internet. You have to play by these rules otherwise you are banned or completely and utterly dependent of one single entities. Moreover, if you then play by Apple's or Facebook's rules you still do not get the impact as from Google traffic-wise.

Ultimately, Google haven't entered the Chinese Market which shows the company's values. Every larger western corporation have build joint venture based branches in China—every corporation, except Google—and that's distinguishes Google.

[rbarooah]

I agree that you don't get my point.

The reason Google hasn't built a walled garden around the internet because they simply don't yet have the power to do that.

You talk as if it was something they could easily have done but have chosen not to. I disagree. They just aren't in a position to do it.

It makes no sense at all to say that innovation on the web has vanished because of the Appstore. We are in in a boom time for internet startups, and we have healthy browser competition leading to web standards advancing much faster than at any time in the past.

There is room for both the open web, and for more controlled environments like the app store or Facebook to coexist and compete with one another. Each offers different tradeoffs.

The existence of different kinds of environment is a good thing. It provides a variety of different economic opportunities, and choices for consumers.

Google would naturally like to have more influence and control, but the reality is that they exist in a competitive environment.

[tferris]

Pardon, you are totally misleading.

Google could do this—there are multiple options to silently wallgarden the user. Just check how much traffic Google moves. If they want they could arbitrarily redirect traffic and subtly punish user's not using their tools.

But that's not their culture. Just look at their products, how far they pushing the boundaries and still stay open, give back and contribute to the community. Look at V8, Dart, Go—all open, all free, all top-notch, all following the Internet's principles and look at Apple, FB—I see no groundbreaking innovation that's free or not protecting their walled garden. Even if Google has some hidden agenda with their products (like with Chrome) the products are always best-of-breed and never deadlock the user.

The point is: Google benefits of an open Internet, their business model is fully based on an open Internet. Therefore they will do everything to keep the Internet neutral, free and decentralized. In contrast, the bizmodels of Apple and FB do not rely on these values, they need walled gardens. Enough reasons to trust them less.

RE-EDIT: Took out later added passages as wished.

[j_col]

Facebook have given back plenty of open source to the dev community. Scribe (their federated logging server) and HipHop (their PHP compiler) come to mind immediately, but there may be others.

[zerostar07]

Their business tactics are ridiculously sleazy though. Aside from the google smear campaign fiasco last year, do you know that facebook does not allow AdSense advertising on it's 3rd party applications? They don't want FB ads performance to be compared with Google's (more profitable ads) on the same pages.

[j_col]

> (please don't mention some minor FB side-products; Apple has tons of innovative products but none of them is free).

Please don't rewrite your original comment after I've responded, not cool.

[mindcrime]

Scribe (their federated logging server) and HipHop (their PHP compiler) come to mind immediately, but there may be others.

Thrift[1] and Cassandra[2] as well, FWIW.

[1]: http://thrift.apache.org

[2]: http://cassandra.apache.org/

[rbarooah]

You've actually made my point for me. "Redirecting traffic and subtly punishing users" is far from a walled garden, and would lead to an instant backlash if detected.

As I said, they don't have the power to close the internet that you attribute to them. This has nothing to do with their culture, however great you might think it is.

[tferris]

Discussing a hairsplitting definition of a walled garden doesn't make sense here. Google do not deadlock wether users nor site owner/publishers (referred above as "users" as well) to use their products but they could as explained above (deadlock=walled garden).

[Sargis]

Google's mission is to display their ads to as many people as possible. How is a walled garden going to help achieve that goal?

[rbarooah]

...because Google left the Internet's core like it is and didn't build a walled garden around it.

The commenter I was replying to claimed that Google chose not to build a walled garden around the internet because of their good character.

If they were able to do this, they'd be able to limit the threat of Facebook and other advertising based competitors.

They haven't done it simply because they can't. Not because it wouldn't be to their advantage.

[Natsu]

> The reason Google hasn't built a walled garden around the internet because they simply don't yet have the power to do that.

Google has more power than many others who have built walled gardens in the past.

[Tloewald]

Google have entered the Chinese market, compromised their values and still got their asses handed to them by Baidu, then pulled out. Not quite the same thing.

[dnda]

Care to support your theory with numbers and facts?

[pyre]

Google was in China until their internal network was (supposedly) compromised by the the Chinese Government. This is a fact.

Google was not the #1 search engine in China. This is also a fact.

Whether they 'got their ass handed to them' is another story, which could be supported by numbers, though it's somewhat subjective.

[Tloewald]

Google made a deal with the Chinese government to censor search results - also a fact.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-bows...

Google's penetration in China was very low (we've had native Chinese speakers living with us for the last three years and they had hardly heard of Google).

Not only is Google's share in China low, it's falling.

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/02/23/sizing-up-two-internet...

[brudgers]

"You can be successful with your product on the WWW without employing any Google services"

It is often more difficult to be successful on the internet without devoting significant resources to Google specific SEO. Doing so without the benefit of Google search would be orders of magnitude more difficult, and Google is under no obligation to return any particular website in their results (e.g. Safe Search).

Google is a company just like any other, only, perhaps, more so.

[tferris]

I don't agree.

If you build a really great web based product you don't need to do any single SEO activity to get strong traffic. No white or black hat or anything needed. People will come anyway.

It's all about the product. If it's good people will tell and Google will notice. And Google is so smart that every crappy site powered by 100,000 system generated backlinks blasts will stay inferior.

[brudgers]

>"If you build a really great web based product"

Assuming a really great web based product begs the question a bit. It's a pretty select group.

[zerostar07]

Twitter, facebook, airbnb didn't do any SEO

[brudgers]

JustinTV, Scribd, and Carwoo are more typical new companies.

Ebay and Amazon are more typical of large consumer facing companies.

Facebook does a great deal of SEO - it's how they compete with Linkedin for eyeballs.

[jkn]

I don't see anything that fundamentally distinguishes google from these other companies other than their present strategic position.

There is I think a difference in company culture. Sure, it is not something you can measure like market capitalization or dividends, but that doesn't make it insignificant.

It is common for people to say that all big companies are equivalent in that they just look for the best strategy to maximize shareholder value, which they have to do by law. I don't think that's the complete picture: there are humans behind every company, behind every decision they make. If Larry Page and Sergey Brin believe in an open Internet, that will strongly influence what strategy among many they choose to maximize shareholder value. Well, as long as they have a controlling stake, which might be for a long time seeing the recently announced stock split.

But it's not only board members who determine how open a company is. For example, developers have their say in what technology or protocol will be used for a particular project. What they propose might depend on their personal views, and what passes as a valid argument (e.g. openness or standard compliance) depends on company culture. Personal views and company culture obviously depend on who gets hired, and that's a matter where anyone (developer, HR, etc.) might have a say. If Google employees have a bias towards hiring people who embrace open technologies, that will have an effect. And if Google's image tends to attract job applications from people who believe in an open Internet, that will also have an effect. This culture thing is probably more stable than a strategic position.

[rbarooah]

For all the reports that Google is full of idealists, I hear just as many that it's a very 'careerist' place, and it's clearly attractive to people who want to make money as much as it is to those who believe in internet freedom.

I agree that culture is not irrelevant. I don't even dispute that Google attracts people who have a certain ideology. I just don't think that Google's ideology is all that clear or meaningful.

When they use words like "openness" or "freedom" these become a rorschach onto which people project their own hopes.

I would like to see Google succeed by proving the competitive advantage of openness, not by moralizing about others who are choosing to test another theory of how to provide value.

[eternalban]

> their actions feel balanced and neutral compared to any other player.

There are distinct business models at play here and that should be noted before arriving at a conclusion that Google is a benevolent corporate actor. The fact that Google (or any company for that matter) can dominate and observe traffic patterns and content should be a matter of concern to the democratically [in the contemporary sense] minded individuals.

[sounds]

I follow your logic. I agree.

What concrete action would you suggest to make the internet more democratic?

[eternalban]

Central servers must go. We must also disentangle presence management, identity, and services built on top of those layers. Access to identity must be layered and fully subject to user control.

I am personally remiss in this matter as I thought deeply about all this when ICQ came out in mid 90s (and even filed a PPA on April 1st 1997 with USPTO on my take on the solution) but did not advocate effectively enough for the (obvious) architectural remedies. Frankly it bugs me to this day and weighs on me like a still born child.

[lukeschlather]

Can we create a trusted identity service that doesn't rely on centralized highly-trusted nodes? It seems necessary to me that the government or other large associations (/corporations) are the only entities with the resources necessary to secure and maintain decent authentication services. I can't say I'm fond of the idea of maintaining a personal auth server so I can participate in society (and I'm one of our privileged class who can actually contemplate doing such a thing.)

[eternalban]

I couldn't design my way around a centralized bootstrap node, but after that, it can be decentralized. And it has to be highly trusted, so the vision for the ur-node was a bunch of servers in Switzerland inside a vault, run by a public non-profit; subject to random audits; and funded by the IP royalties of the projected patent. (But thank God we can now rely on the good graces of concerned geeks such as Sergey Brin who have millions to spare. (Right Sergey?))

Yes, there is need for user agents running on the user's devices. Your chrome browser transparently maintains a https connection to mother ship (last I checked). I don't think that part of it is really an issue.

[sounds]

About that centralized bootstrap node:

i2p, tor, and dht all rely on some sort of centralized node for bootstrapping. e.g. a fresh install, or when the client has been disconnected from the internet for years.

Would it work to use multiple orthogonal bootstrap methods? i.e. try in a random order any of the following until the client can join the swarm:

• DNS records, http pages, etc. (a straightforward approach like i2p, tor, and dht do)

• "user content," i.e. comments on news sites, blogs, image sharing sites, pastebin, github, etc. that contain the information, hidden using steganography or encryption. A simple google search should not find this user content - the bootstrap method would need to crawl a large number of pages looking for the "signal in the noise," which would make it difficult to find and eliminate all the places the data was hidden.

• "data broadcast," i.e. the bootstrap client listens on random TCP or UDP ports within a certain range. Active swarm peers do "port knocking" in this port range, subdividing the IPv4 space among them so that they visit every IP address within about 24 hours. The range is chosen so as not to incriminate the peers doing the knocking. The waiting bootstrap node will eventually be reached, and the active peer can then transmit the needed data. (IPv4 address blacklists are a must, i.e. do not "port knock" in government address ranges or other sensitive targets.)

By attempting all the methods at random, any that get shut down can be detected and the status updates pushed out to all clients.

[sounds]

I'm loving this discussion, but how would we convince even 1% of internet users to switch?

Unless I am badly mistaken, you propose we tell people: "abandon all the services you've grown to like about the internet. Let's reboot the internet within the confines of this new secure service."

No sarcasm intended - a new service, with real security, would still lack a "killer app."

[eternalban]

How about email without spam, guaranteed, as just one example?

[sounds]

In case it needs repeating, I would subscribe. I want this to happen.

I'm guessing I don't understand the email service, but if I assume it's separate from the current SMTP world, then...

• gmail is currently "good enough" most people wouldn't see 100% spam blocking as a big improvement

• no address for inbound email; can't post "my address" online

• friction to get the service set up, because an email client is included already on my machine, my phone, etc.

• might cost extra to be able to read my email anywhere (i.e. "cloud email storage")

Ok, so if it's so hard to replace email, how can it be done? Instinct tells me that until gmail loses some of its shine, nothing is going to happen. But gmail is more vulnerable than people think, and having a workable alternative when the time comes would go a long way toward getting people to switch. And if gmail fails, it's not going to be Yahoo Mail that steps up to fill in - gmail is the peak of traditional email services. I don't see how, from a technical standpoint, you could do any better than gmail without abandoning SMTP email altogether. (And I mean gmail along with all the accessory programs to make it perfect, i.e. iPhone integration, google apps for your domain, etc.)

[rmc]

Imagine Facebook or Google controlled the music industry like Apple do.

Imagine Facebook or Google controlled the mobile phone market like Apple do.

Imagine Apple or Google controlled social interaction like Facebook do.

Imagine Apple, Google or Facebook controlled desktops like Microsoft do.

[lukeschlather]

>Imagine Facebook or Google controlled the mobile phone market like Apple do.

Verizon and AT&T control the mobile phone market, all the new money tech cos wish they had that kind of government-granted monopoly.

[gbog]

Agree with that and other points you made but one can also be concerned by some recent evolutions off Google. Their move toward a more "designed" ui, with hover popups everywhere, etc, is a bit alarming. Their catch up game with Facebook could be a slippery slope. The recent removal of many labs. And so on.

For me they can keep the benevolence as a priority only if they become more something like a great worldwide university paid by some ads in a search engine.