6 ms·

Former Google chief predicts the Internet will split by 2028

66 points by anastalaz 8y ago

smhenderson 8y ago
Previous discussion here: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html?__source=sharebar|linkedin&par=sharebar https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-p...
- adamrezich 8y ago
  You mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047825
  - smhenderson 8y ago
    Yes, thank you. That's what I get for posting too early in the morning.
stephengillie 8y ago
Article title includes the clarifying line: A Chinese Web and an American one. And that split effectively happened years ago.
- graeme 8y ago
  Schmidt meant the Chinese net would extend beyond China.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    Will the Chinanet also have a Great Firewall between Chinese and foreign connections?
    - graeme 8y ago
      Too soon to tell.
- ggregoire 8y ago
  What’s interesting to me is that the American Internet is used globally, except in China and Russia (?). But the Chinese Internet is used only in China and the Russian one only in Russia.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    African nations that have bought telecommunications equipment from China have expressed interest in things like the Great Firewall. I understood Schmidt’s comments as relating not only to the Chinese internet as such, but also the Chinese model of the internet, which China is keenly exporting.
    - pasbesoin 8y ago
      Exactly. Keep in mind, too, that China's Great Firewall was prototyped using "Western" technology and services. This isn't just China. It reflects fundamental differences in what different organizations and interests want the Internet to be -- and not be. But, China is making it a turnkey system, for those without the resources or wherewithall to do so for themselves. Note also precursors, such as in and through the global market for oil. Autocracies propped up and sold military hardware in return for stable access. Now, digital armament, in return for... And remember, it started with Westerners, out to make a buck.
3pt14159 8y ago
The only way to truly split the internet is to have extremely harsh violation provisions. Otherwise citizens can use satellite phones. Unless we consider China to already be "split" from the rest of the internet, which it isn't for people with means, but is practically for the everyday person.
- golergka 8y ago
  > Otherwise citizens can use satellite phones. And how many actually will?
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    I think sometimes that tech guys say these things that are completely unrealistic because they themselves find the thing to be completely reasonable and acceptable. I feel like we don't really have a good understanding of how normal, non-tech centric, people work. I mean really, satellite phones? Unless we're planning on moving our entire terrestrial mobile data infrastructure to be satellite based, that's just not practical. To even suggest it is just the height of naiveté. If someone can already provide her family access to LCD Chinese culture, what benefit is there in her going that extra mile to get access to LCD Western culture? (Ignoring the fact that she's probably not even aware there is a difference between a cell phone and a satellite phone in terms of data access. And please, answer that question from the perspective of the average Chinese female secretary just trying to get her kid fed and put to bed every night. And try to answer honestly.)
  - tlb 8y ago
    Not many, but it doesn’t take many to have an impact. A historical parallel is the use of shortwave receivers inside the USSR to receive Radio Free Europe. It was illegal to listen to, and the KGB jammed it sometimes, but people listened secretly anyway and it was an important conduit of information into an otherwise mostly closed society.
    - golergka 8y ago
      > it was an important conduit of information into an otherwise mostly closed society No it wasn't, really. Have you actually experienced this or are you retelling some long-read from New Yorker? Sorry if it reads as uncalled for personal attack, just that I and my family have much more first-hand experience with this, and while having western news was nice, it really didn't affect the political stability of the regime in any meaningful way. People are not rational. They don't make decisions based on information presented to them. They mostly just repeat whatever opinion they perceive to be popular, usually without even asking themselves if they believe it or not. Propaganda is not about making people think something. Propaganda is about making people think that most of other people think so.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
It would be actually quite nice to split the Web into two very distinct parts, but not Chinese and American as Schmidt predicts, but into documents and apps. Documents is the traditional, HTML-based web, that must absolutely stay open. The apps part is the aspect that is constantly evolving, and that becomes more and more complex year by year, and already DRM and other non-free and non-open components are implemented in popular browsers so that people may use it to access protected content. We might as well stop pretending there is one web and split it into two. I will continue to use the document-based web using lightweight browser that don't need any JS functionality, and will only venture to the app-based "web" when I need, probably using another browser, maybe even in a virtual machine.
cryoshon 8y ago
>Schmidt said he thinks people will likely see “fantastic leadership in products and services from China,” noting the scale of the nation’s business, the massive wealth being created there and the advance of global trade, according to the report. But he acknowledged the country’s growing economic influence may have political consequences: “There’s a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc.," CNBC reported. this is doublespeak of the very highest order. on the one hand, schmidt is praising china so that google has better chances of success there. on the other hand, he's admitting that china might be a totalitarian state presently or in the future. the dupe is that it isn't a danger for china to start doing censorship or controlling speech. it's a reality, and now he's trying to gaslight us by claiming that the reality is false and his impression of it is what is really true. china is a totalitarian state. and soon, with google's help and the complicity of google employees, they will continue to do so with greater efficiency than before. mao imagined a country where the state was the not merely the highest power in the land, but the only power. they're getting there. if their internet splits definitively, they'll use their cordoned internet as an iron curtain. or perhaps a "bamboo curtain" is the more appropriate term. they are already well along this path. either way, over a billion people will be kept in the dark. some will enjoy it. some will not care. and some will die for their curiosity. schmidt knows this perfectly well.
- meddlepal 8y ago
  > china is a totalitarian state. and soon, with google's help and the complicity of google employees, they will continue to do so with greater efficiency than before. mao imagined a country where the state was the not merely the highest power in the land, but the only power. they're getting there. This isn't Google's problem. They're just a company out to make some money for the shareholders. If the people of China want Democracy and freedom they need to fight for it. So far, the Chinese have not done that and do not seem to care that much about western-style freedom. It is entirely possible that not all cultures and societies desire the same thing.
  - SkyMarshal 8y ago
    Some of the Chinese have done that - Tienamenn Square, Hong Kong democracy protests, and Taiwanese democracy come to mind. And yes it is Google’s problem to extent Google is not an amoral monolithic entity but a collection of human beings all over the world for whom human rights are directly impactful, and will be even more so as totalitarianism grows and spreads. At some point we have to stop hiding behind the belief that shareholder value maximization also inevitably results in human freedom. That’s a post-Coldwar conceit that was financially lucrative for a time for Western companies, but which the CCP is doing their best to disprove now.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
This whole article reads like a promotion for China which comes on the heels of several reports about Google helping China cracking down on dissidents. To me, this is a Google PR piece, nothing more.
techntoke 8y ago
Hopefully it will split away from JavaScript.
vjsc 8y ago
How about Internet splitting up based on large companies? Facebook already tried it with free basics. Google with its hold on Android devices is going to go down the same path sooner or later. Apple has already it's own closed garden. Netflix is doing that to entertainment. It won't be a surprise if a few years later you have to buy a package web services from your ISPs and you only see what you pay for. Not like the free internet we imagined for sure.
- apocalyptic0n3 8y ago
  I feel like Google is already doing it with AMP.
  - scoom 8y ago
    And chrome accounts.
    - aceon48 8y ago
      AMP Is open source, Microsoft/Bing are on board, and Google recently stepped back from AMP governance to encourage more parties involved. No one group will hold more than 1/3 control.
      - JoshMnem 8y ago
        Google AMP is not "open source". You might be able to offer suggestions about it, but it's not like a piece of software that you can fork and develop independently. Google controls the main reading device (Google Chrome). The "open source" line is marketing BS. When I read "no group will hold more than 1/3 control" it sounds like 3 big players will wink at each other while they pillage the WWW and divide the spoils.
      - scoom 8y ago
        AMP is the version of every news site that takes 10 seconds to redirect me to the real version if I'm lucky.
- 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
browsercoin 8y ago
This is assuming that the communist party of china will be able to maintain their grip. I'd say it's far more likely to see China split up much like the old USSR did by 2028. They are even making the exact same mistakes like building roads and infrastructure in central asia. If you've been following China for a while, you will see how nervous the leadership is, and like Putin, opted for "military achievements" to rally troops, and now facing a recession born out of the US-China trade war and all the social revolt and ethnic separatism oppressed for so long will explode. Information is like entropy. It can't be contained. China's internet only works because they are willing to kill people over tweets and harvest their organs. You can't keep this up.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > I'd say it's far more likely to see China split up much like the old USSR did by 2028. At the library the other day my eye was caught by a book on the shelf about the “looming collapse of China”. I took it down, saw that the back cover augured that China would surely collapse within 5 years... and then I opened the book to the copyright page and saw that it was published in the early millennium. Forecasts that any country is going to collapse can really miss the target in retrospect. > They are even making the exact same mistakes like building roads and infrastructure in central asia. The USSR’s ultimately fatal mistake was a bloated military sector and the planned economy. Its development efforts in Central Asia are not typically viewed as a big mistake, and Moscow’s ability to extract resources from Central Asia probably staved off the collapse for a time. If you have seen someone claim otherwise, perhaps you could post a citation? > all the ... ethnic separatism In fact, China’s brutal panopticon police state has probably neutered ethnic separatism. Yes, Tibetans and Uighurs harbour grievances, but the sheer number of Han Chinese settling in those regions, and the total control of communications and people’s movements, means it is unlikely that those peoples would ever be able to adequately network to push for change. For those of us interested in how ethnic minorities fared under the USSR, China’s efforts to supress their minorities are at a whole different level.
- anotheramala 8y ago
  Wasn't there a lot of economic instability in the soviet union? The Chinese leadership must have understood that and took on economic prosperity as the main way to preserve their government.
ewgoforth 8y ago
This is pretty much a return to the mid nineties AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc. era.
anticensor 8y ago
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/865 https://xkcd.com/865
ams6110 8y ago
It's also spitting between EU and the rest of the world, e.g. a number of site block EU visitors due to GDPR. And I routinely block China and Russia from servers I set up, because 95% of the break in attempts come from there.
jedrek 8y ago
I'm tired of these kinds of big predictions because there is absolutely no penalty for being wrong.
jwilk 8y ago
Archived copy without GDPR nag screen: https://web.archive.org/web/20180924153131/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/former-google-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chinese-web-an-american-one/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180924153131/https://www.washi...
- konschubert 8y ago
  The irony...

66 points by anastalaz 8y ago

Previous discussion here: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html?__source=sharebar|linkedin&par=sharebar https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-p...

adamrezich 8y ago
You mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047825
- smhenderson 8y ago
  Yes, thank you. That's what I get for posting too early in the morning.

stephengillie 8y ago

Article title includes the clarifying line: A Chinese Web and an American one. And that split effectively happened years ago.

graeme 8y ago
Schmidt meant the Chinese net would extend beyond China.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Will the Chinanet also have a Great Firewall between Chinese and foreign connections?
  - graeme 8y ago
    Too soon to tell.
ggregoire 8y ago
What’s interesting to me is that the American Internet is used globally, except in China and Russia (?). But the Chinese Internet is used only in China and the Russian one only in Russia.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  African nations that have bought telecommunications equipment from China have expressed interest in things like the Great Firewall. I understood Schmidt’s comments as relating not only to the Chinese internet as such, but also the Chinese model of the internet, which China is keenly exporting.
  - pasbesoin 8y ago
    Exactly. Keep in mind, too, that China's Great Firewall was prototyped using "Western" technology and services. This isn't just China. It reflects fundamental differences in what different organizations and interests want the Internet to be -- and not be. But, China is making it a turnkey system, for those without the resources or wherewithall to do so for themselves. Note also precursors, such as in and through the global market for oil. Autocracies propped up and sold military hardware in return for stable access. Now, digital armament, in return for... And remember, it started with Westerners, out to make a buck.

3pt14159 8y ago

The only way to truly split the internet is to have extremely harsh violation provisions. Otherwise citizens can use satellite phones. Unless we consider China to already be "split" from the rest of the internet, which it isn't for people with means, but is practically for the everyday person.

golergka 8y ago
> Otherwise citizens can use satellite phones. And how many actually will?
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I think sometimes that tech guys say these things that are completely unrealistic because they themselves find the thing to be completely reasonable and acceptable. I feel like we don't really have a good understanding of how normal, non-tech centric, people work. I mean really, satellite phones? Unless we're planning on moving our entire terrestrial mobile data infrastructure to be satellite based, that's just not practical. To even suggest it is just the height of naiveté. If someone can already provide her family access to LCD Chinese culture, what benefit is there in her going that extra mile to get access to LCD Western culture? (Ignoring the fact that she's probably not even aware there is a difference between a cell phone and a satellite phone in terms of data access. And please, answer that question from the perspective of the average Chinese female secretary just trying to get her kid fed and put to bed every night. And try to answer honestly.)
- tlb 8y ago
  Not many, but it doesn’t take many to have an impact. A historical parallel is the use of shortwave receivers inside the USSR to receive Radio Free Europe. It was illegal to listen to, and the KGB jammed it sometimes, but people listened secretly anyway and it was an important conduit of information into an otherwise mostly closed society.
  - golergka 8y ago
    > it was an important conduit of information into an otherwise mostly closed society No it wasn't, really. Have you actually experienced this or are you retelling some long-read from New Yorker? Sorry if it reads as uncalled for personal attack, just that I and my family have much more first-hand experience with this, and while having western news was nice, it really didn't affect the political stability of the regime in any meaningful way. People are not rational. They don't make decisions based on information presented to them. They mostly just repeat whatever opinion they perceive to be popular, usually without even asking themselves if they believe it or not. Propaganda is not about making people think something. Propaganda is about making people think that most of other people think so.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

It would be actually quite nice to split the Web into two very distinct parts, but not Chinese and American as Schmidt predicts, but into documents and apps. Documents is the traditional, HTML-based web, that must absolutely stay open. The apps part is the aspect that is constantly evolving, and that becomes more and more complex year by year, and already DRM and other non-free and non-open components are implemented in popular browsers so that people may use it to access protected content. We might as well stop pretending there is one web and split it into two. I will continue to use the document-based web using lightweight browser that don't need any JS functionality, and will only venture to the app-based "web" when I need, probably using another browser, maybe even in a virtual machine.

cryoshon 8y ago

>Schmidt said he thinks people will likely see “fantastic leadership in products and services from China,” noting the scale of the nation’s business, the massive wealth being created there and the advance of global trade, according to the report. But he acknowledged the country’s growing economic influence may have political consequences: “There’s a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc.," CNBC reported. this is doublespeak of the very highest order. on the one hand, schmidt is praising china so that google has better chances of success there. on the other hand, he's admitting that china might be a totalitarian state presently or in the future. the dupe is that it isn't a danger for china to start doing censorship or controlling speech. it's a reality, and now he's trying to gaslight us by claiming that the reality is false and his impression of it is what is really true. china is a totalitarian state. and soon, with google's help and the complicity of google employees, they will continue to do so with greater efficiency than before. mao imagined a country where the state was the not merely the highest power in the land, but the only power. they're getting there. if their internet splits definitively, they'll use their cordoned internet as an iron curtain. or perhaps a "bamboo curtain" is the more appropriate term. they are already well along this path. either way, over a billion people will be kept in the dark. some will enjoy it. some will not care. and some will die for their curiosity. schmidt knows this perfectly well.

meddlepal 8y ago
> china is a totalitarian state. and soon, with google's help and the complicity of google employees, they will continue to do so with greater efficiency than before. mao imagined a country where the state was the not merely the highest power in the land, but the only power. they're getting there. This isn't Google's problem. They're just a company out to make some money for the shareholders. If the people of China want Democracy and freedom they need to fight for it. So far, the Chinese have not done that and do not seem to care that much about western-style freedom. It is entirely possible that not all cultures and societies desire the same thing.
- SkyMarshal 8y ago
  Some of the Chinese have done that - Tienamenn Square, Hong Kong democracy protests, and Taiwanese democracy come to mind. And yes it is Google’s problem to extent Google is not an amoral monolithic entity but a collection of human beings all over the world for whom human rights are directly impactful, and will be even more so as totalitarianism grows and spreads. At some point we have to stop hiding behind the belief that shareholder value maximization also inevitably results in human freedom. That’s a post-Coldwar conceit that was financially lucrative for a time for Western companies, but which the CCP is doing their best to disprove now.

at-fates-hands 8y ago

This whole article reads like a promotion for China which comes on the heels of several reports about Google helping China cracking down on dissidents. To me, this is a Google PR piece, nothing more.

techntoke 8y ago

Hopefully it will split away from JavaScript.

vjsc 8y ago

How about Internet splitting up based on large companies? Facebook already tried it with free basics. Google with its hold on Android devices is going to go down the same path sooner or later. Apple has already it's own closed garden. Netflix is doing that to entertainment. It won't be a surprise if a few years later you have to buy a package web services from your ISPs and you only see what you pay for. Not like the free internet we imagined for sure.

apocalyptic0n3 8y ago
I feel like Google is already doing it with AMP.
- scoom 8y ago
  And chrome accounts.
  - aceon48 8y ago
    AMP Is open source, Microsoft/Bing are on board, and Google recently stepped back from AMP governance to encourage more parties involved. No one group will hold more than 1/3 control.
    - JoshMnem 8y ago
      Google AMP is not "open source". You might be able to offer suggestions about it, but it's not like a piece of software that you can fork and develop independently. Google controls the main reading device (Google Chrome). The "open source" line is marketing BS. When I read "no group will hold more than 1/3 control" it sounds like 3 big players will wink at each other while they pillage the WWW and divide the spoils.
    - scoom 8y ago
      AMP is the version of every news site that takes 10 seconds to redirect me to the real version if I'm lucky.
8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

browsercoin 8y ago

This is assuming that the communist party of china will be able to maintain their grip. I'd say it's far more likely to see China split up much like the old USSR did by 2028. They are even making the exact same mistakes like building roads and infrastructure in central asia. If you've been following China for a while, you will see how nervous the leadership is, and like Putin, opted for "military achievements" to rally troops, and now facing a recession born out of the US-China trade war and all the social revolt and ethnic separatism oppressed for so long will explode. Information is like entropy. It can't be contained. China's internet only works because they are willing to kill people over tweets and harvest their organs. You can't keep this up.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> I'd say it's far more likely to see China split up much like the old USSR did by 2028. At the library the other day my eye was caught by a book on the shelf about the “looming collapse of China”. I took it down, saw that the back cover augured that China would surely collapse within 5 years... and then I opened the book to the copyright page and saw that it was published in the early millennium. Forecasts that any country is going to collapse can really miss the target in retrospect. > They are even making the exact same mistakes like building roads and infrastructure in central asia. The USSR’s ultimately fatal mistake was a bloated military sector and the planned economy. Its development efforts in Central Asia are not typically viewed as a big mistake, and Moscow’s ability to extract resources from Central Asia probably staved off the collapse for a time. If you have seen someone claim otherwise, perhaps you could post a citation? > all the ... ethnic separatism In fact, China’s brutal panopticon police state has probably neutered ethnic separatism. Yes, Tibetans and Uighurs harbour grievances, but the sheer number of Han Chinese settling in those regions, and the total control of communications and people’s movements, means it is unlikely that those peoples would ever be able to adequately network to push for change. For those of us interested in how ethnic minorities fared under the USSR, China’s efforts to supress their minorities are at a whole different level.
anotheramala 8y ago
Wasn't there a lot of economic instability in the soviet union? The Chinese leadership must have understood that and took on economic prosperity as the main way to preserve their government.

ewgoforth 8y ago

This is pretty much a return to the mid nineties AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc. era.

anticensor 8y ago

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/865 https://xkcd.com/865

ams6110 8y ago

It's also spitting between EU and the rest of the world, e.g. a number of site block EU visitors due to GDPR. And I routinely block China and Russia from servers I set up, because 95% of the break in attempts come from there.

jedrek 8y ago

I'm tired of these kinds of big predictions because there is absolutely no penalty for being wrong.

jwilk 8y ago

Archived copy without GDPR nag screen: https://web.archive.org/web/20180924153131/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/former-google-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chinese-web-an-american-one/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180924153131/https://www.washi...

konschubert 8y ago
The irony...