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Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

166 points by ptrkmhms 5y ago

Sophistifunk 5y ago
From where I sit the #1 risk to the free and open internet these days is Google. Edit: two reasons: 1) Because adtech is destroying society. Surveillance is never good. Ads as funding smears absolutely everything with perverse incentives that act consistently against both the explicit wishes and implicit best-interests of the viewers, and (it seems moreso every year) society at large. 2) Google is doing everything it can to protect and defend their control over said adtech, using all mechanisms at its disposal including a monopoly on Search, almost a monopoly (and veto power) on what defines HTML (Blink not Chrome), and like 70% of mobile platform.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  I still believe arrest adtech made websites free for so many years. ( I mean literally not paying hard cash access it). Not everyone in the world has equal financial power as a US citizen.
- acomjean 5y ago
  How so? It seems that a search engine would need the internet to have as much information out there in the open to index and give us the results upon searching.. Because they are so dominate they exercise outsized control, but there are still a few others. Data behind paywalls/logins is useless to them.
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    When they hide data you're obviously and explicitly looking for they are making the internet less open. Look at the google vs duckduckgo search results for this: "How a Convicted Terrorist used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Website to Identify Targets"
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      Since I know how Google crawl and index work, and I know how the right-wing noise machine works, I suggest a very likely explanation is that Cernovich used Google webmaster tools to remove the URL from their index for the specific purpose of whipping conspiracy theories on Twitter.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        That’s an interesting theory, any data to support it? Has this Cernovich guy done stuff like this in the past?
        jeffbee 5y ago
        I have as much data to support my theory as the other person does to support theirs. All we know is the page isn't in the results on Google. And yes, Cernovich has a history of PR stunts.
        Consultant32452 5y ago
        You might have a point if this wasn't just the most recent of a giant pile of censorship from Google. Medical doctors can't discuss possible treatments for COVID. Medical doctors can't discuss side effects from vaccines. Senate testimony where an alleged Ukrainian whistleblower is named is banned. If you even say the name, not even in any relevant context, you will get banned. The list goes on and on. There is nothing "open" about the Google web. But again, I don't believe there's anything I or anyone else could say that would change your mind.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        It’s a sad state of affairs. It’s like they keep saying “stop hitting me!” while they hit you. My little brother used to do that. Google isn’t big brother, Google is my little brother.
      - deleted 5y ago
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    The biggest issue is that Google Search kills its own sources, which is shortsighted. Google constantly steals manually curated quality content, and regurgitates it in Knowledge Graph without attribution, such that the people who did all the work to develop and curate that information aren't compensated. The end result: As the web Google stole from dies off, Google increasingly has worse, less accurate sources it has to draw from. Journalists are at the forefront of this, and you can see several countries moving to charge Google for lifting news content to combat this. But there's a lot of other sources on the web that probably won't be so lucky.
  - neolog 5y ago
    > Data behind paywalls/logins is useless to them. Sites are often not behind a paywall if you reach them via google (and only google).
  - erdo 5y ago
    Except of course Google is not a search engine company, Google is an advertising company
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      To this day I have no idea what that statement is supposed to express despite seeing it about a dozen times per week. Google makes money selling ads yes, but their core product is search. Like a newspaper, which does journalism, and also has an ad department, or a TV show, with ad breaks, or a sports broadcast. Do people think Google makes their search worse to... sell fewer ads?
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        It properly calls attention to what google’s primary purpose is. Its not search. A newspaper’s primary purpose is to inform the public, and make money while doing so. Googles primary purpose is not search, and to make money while doing so. Googles primary purpose is collect and sell data, and make money while doing so.
        cromwellian 5y ago
        Google doesn’t sell data, and Google’s primary purpose is Search and organizing information, ads is just the way it’s funded. If the primary purpose was ada, then it would stop all of the wasteful spending on engineering projects with no relation to, and no hope of, making ad money.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        When those projects are found to not lock users and customers in Google ecosystem and/or not to bring ad revenue, those are axed with no remorse.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        You’re right on the not selling data directly. I should have been more precise. Google is in the business of collecting data and selling advertising using that data. For the purpose of making money. Search hasn’t been part of their purpose in decades. Let me ask you this, has search gotten better or worse in the last 5 - 10 years? Has their data collection gotten more invasive or less over the last 5 - 10 years? I think we both know what kind of company Google is once those questions are answered.
  - passivate 5y ago
    Yes, while the web may seem "open" due to its fragmented nature of hosting, Google wants all content to reside in their own walled garden so it can quickly kill competition. AMP was a major play towards that. Also, all (?) their money makers are closed source and proprietary - which is just fine by me, but Google should own up to what they really are instead of projecting a fake "open" image of themselves.
- bsmith0 5y ago
  These are the most predictable HN comments
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Google has actively replaced the free and open internet with one that is more convenient and brand flattering as soon as mass media started to fight against becoming a legacy product.
  - ditonal 5y ago
    The article is a fluff piece that's comically uncritical of Google. There's obvious hypocrisy for a company that's done all sorts of user-antagonistic things to internet users as Google has, from Google AMP stealing traffic, to PRISM actively violating the 4th amendment, to Dragonfly explicitly enabling censorship. Google's gotten away with the hypocrisy due to a relentless PR engine. Maybe if you don't like predictable Hacker News snark, downvote the PR "submarine" pieces from the front page, because there's nothing of value in this article and "predictable" critique is the best it deserves.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      Please don't distort the meaning of words. PR "submarine" pieces are a very real thing, but they are exactly what the phrase suggests — an article put out by a corporate PR department for publication. This was literally an interview by a real reporter, edited into an article. You might not like that the interviewer wasn't antagonistic (let's be real — most aren't!), but this is not a "PR submarine piece" by any sane definition of the phrase.
      - travoc 5y ago
        Reprinting a single person’s viewpoints without critique or counterpoint isn’t news or “real reporting.” It’s still just a PR piece.
        neolog 5y ago
- renewiltord 5y ago
  So, in theory, you have some metric that places Google up at #1. For that to be non-trivial, you must have more than one member of the set evaluated. And for it to be meaningful, maybe you have a top ten or you have evaluated less than ten. All right, then, enlighten us with your top ten. And if you haven’t already, I’d like to see where on the top ten you’ve put regimes like the Chinese government and the US government.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Ahead of all the regulation happy governments, the walled gardens, and spam/trolls making areas of the web that are not resourced largely unusable?
  - nuker 5y ago
    Google is Skynet!
  - denkmoon 5y ago
    Governmental incompetence exceeds their ability to regulate. Google have the capacity to pull off a lot more than Governments. Google would have a walled garden if they could afford to lose the users and manufacturers that would revolt against it.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Google's main product is letting people find stuff on the web. What benefit would a walled garden be to them unless everything was on Google infrastructure? They would need to control everything. They lose the most if the internet balkanizes.
      - denkmoon 5y ago
        Google's main product is ads, not search. Search (and Mail, and Video) are just mechanisms for offering ads. By balkanising the internet they can have a monopoly over offering ads to certain target groups that fall within their walled garden.
        username90 5y ago
        That isn't how this works, Google doesn't have good enough content to compete with other tech giants without the open web. If Google kills the web then Google kills itself. Most of their money comes from their search web page and not the ads from other sites, so people browsing the web is their main source of revenue. Their other sites are big, yes, but not big enough to make them one of the few most valuable companies in the world. Anyway, Google works hard to make the open web competitive with all the walled gardens around. When they do that they put up some fences to make the experience a bit more like walled gardens, but the open web is still just a few seconds and a click away.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Google is literally the only tech giant with an interest in the open internet. Facebook scored the mortal wound on the web — they reinvented a bigger, badder AOL closed garden.
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Just like how YouTube has become a more open and free platform in their care. Or how search results have become more open and free since they dominated market share.
    - bluthund 5y ago
      Do you guys factor the deplatforming they do into this or are you not aware that they are heavily involved in censorship on their platforms
      - logicchains 5y ago
        The person you're replying to was likely being sarcastic.
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        Let me guess.. you're a huge fan of Tim Pool and the likes who constantly talked about how they are oppressed WHILE still on YouTube.
        iratewizard 5y ago
        Let me guess... You're not a huge fan of free speech because your college professor told you it was an outdated concept WHILE still using it as a shield to spew his moronic views.
        ryder9 5y ago
        private platforms dont have 'free speech' you moron
- ignoramous 5y ago
  To be fair, Pichai's quote is taken out of context. In his capacity as Alphabet CEO, he worries about neutrality of the interconnects. TFA goes: > And, when I asked about whether the Chinese model of the internet - much more authoritarian, big on surveillance - is in the ascendant, Pichai said the free and open internet "is being attacked". Importantly, he didn't refer to China directly but he went on to say: "None of our major products and services are available in China." Google does run at least one semi-independent group to tackle such censorship, disinformation, propaganda, and abuse https://jigsaw.google.com/ https://jigsaw.google.com/
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    Call me a cynic but I’m 99% sure that group of Google’s is probably just as ideologically progressive as Google and not independent in any substantial way. Everything from that link reads like progressive ad-copy.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Toxic language online silences important voices. We’re exploring how machine learning can reduce toxicity online and create more space for healthy conversation. Throughout this report we use the term “toxicity,” defined as rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable language that is likely to make someone leave a discussion. We specifically use the term toxicity, as opposed to words like “abuse” or “hate speech” for both practical and scientific reasons. https://jigsaw.google.com/the-current/toxicity/ https://jigsaw.google.com/the-current/toxicity/
    - seriousquestion 5y ago
      > “toxicity,” defined as rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable language that is likely to make someone leave a discussion. We specifically use the term toxicity, as opposed to words like “abuse” or “hate speech” for both practical and scientific reasons. Scientific reasons? There's nothing scientific about a term so undefined that every person can have their own custom definition.
    - justshowpost 5y ago
- brightball 5y ago
  IMO it’s actually Twitter.
- Vixel 5y ago
  Agreed. The only reason he cares it’s because it cost more to sell their ads on proprietary services
iratewizard 5y ago
Google attacks the "free and open internet" globally far more than a backwater country that restricts its citizens internet usage along with a million other things.
eyeball 5y ago
should have posted it as an amp link f google
rdpintqogeogsaa 5y ago
Pot, meet kettle.
throwawaysea 5y ago
This article feels like a rosy, uncritical review of Google under Pichai. Even the opening sentence here is full of tone deaf hypocrisy: > [Sundar Pichai] says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted. Like when Google, with more influence than most countries, censors content on YouTube or the Google App Store? Google’s manipulation of information amounts to political propaganda to those who aren’t aligned with their prevailing views - naturally many countries will balk at letting that kind of foreign interference/control influence their own societies. And I can’t help but view Pichai’s perspective on taxes as a form of convenient regulatory capture / barrier to competition: > I put this to Pichai, who said that Google no longer uses this scheme, is one of the world's biggest taxpayers, and complies with tax laws in every country in which it operates. The article also talks about the activist streak of Google and its employees but doesn’t challenge it: > With more than 100,000 staff, many of them hugely opinionated on internal message boards, and activist in nature, this is just impossible to control. There is a tension between Google genuinely embracing cognitive diversity by having people of all persuasions among its global staff, and at the same time really standing up for particular issues as a company. I don’t think this tension is actually present. Google is a dyed in the wool Bay Area tech company. I don’t think it has employees of “all persuasions” in any great numbers unless they are looking at only the left side of the American political spectrum.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Google doesn't give interviews with executives to outlets that ask critical questions. (Neither does Apple, pretty famously.) Executive interviews tend to lean more towards press releases than journalism.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    MKBHD can be very critical of Apple.
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
Google itself is actively restricting the flow of information. It is really quite sad how Google's formerly excellent search product, has morphed into a tool for censorship, and surveillance capitalism, and in the process, degraded its accuracy significantly.
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Once a company is large and entrenched, regulation is how you stay in power. You create enough Byzantine rules that basically only the largest company can hire the lawyers and comply. It’s an effective way to kill off competition. Google is ready to start encouraging regulation.
- erdo 5y ago
  Why is this being down voted? It's fairly standard practice for a large company isn't it?
m1sta_ 5y ago
I do hope that people read the article and comment on its contents rather than just getting stuck in a loop of "Google bad".
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Nobody likes to challenge their own beliefs - especially when it's a negative belief. (I could provide links to studies, but I like to think the downvotes prove my point for me)
  - tux1968 5y ago
    And upvotes would equally reinforce the validity of your claim for you. Since you're likely as reluctant to challenge your own beliefs as anyone else.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      This is like inception for self fulfilling prophecy
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  Haha where do you think you are There're lots of things about HN that make it better than many other fora, but its collective wild-eyed, frothing reaction to literally the word Google is not one of them. You may as well be on 4chan for threads like these
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Why? The only reason Pichai's comments are important is because he works for a company that is dangerous for internet freedom. Their only use is in predicting Google's business strategies and defending against them. This might as well be a place to talk about Google in general, or Pichai in general irt "internet freedom."
thr0w72594 5y ago
The criticism here is entirely self-serving and hypocritical. Why should Google be able to undemocratically decide which parts of the internet it allows, yet deride governments for doing the same thing? At least the governments ostensibly have the best interests of their people in mind. And even the worst "authoritarian" governments need to answer to their population enough to keep legitimacy. There is no free and open internet, and Google is part of the group of corporations that help prop up the big tech cartel that help kill off each others' competitors, share employee blacklists, and intentionally sacrifice the quality of their product to push their Bay Area bourgeoisie politics around the globe.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Watched the interview and Sundar Pichai sounded so defensive and unauthentic. Why do they do these interviews? I gained absolutely nothing from it.
- Zenst 5y ago
  That is the position of many a CEO of a large company, akin to politicians in that they say lots without actually saying anything and by the time you realise that they have said nothing, they have gone. For example "He says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted." Shifts any blame elsewhere in a way that does not detail this model or outlines any of the issues that define the restrictions and how they effect Google. So for all we know, he could be on about data protection laws like GDPR or the like and paints them as bad without going into any details of the pro's or con's. Remember some law/restriction that is bad for Google may actually be good for the users. Also when I see the term "free internet" I do feel it is a misnomer in many ways, more so in the context it is used.
Zenst 5y ago
I read the article and shame the BBC went for the small sound-bite click-bait title. Most of the article is about other aspects, from AI, Quantum computing, corporation TAX and the title per-say does not do the article justice. With that in mind, it seems most comments appear along the lines of a response to the title and not the content and is just going to clog Dang up with work. I personally found the aspect and questioning about corporation TAX more insightful and perhaps would of been a better sound-bite of a title.
- tweetle_beetle 5y ago
  Amol Rajan thrives on being contrary and questioning designed to provoke. You could see from his other questions that they were purely designed to create headlines in a similar way: > When I invited Pichai to commit there and then to Google pulling out of all tax havens immediately, he didn't take up the offer. > In a very revealing quick-fire round of questions, we discover he doesn't eat meat, drives a Tesla, reveres Alan Turing, wishes he'd met Stephen Hawking, and is jealous of Jeff Bezos's space mission. The headline really is irrelevant to the majority of the interview, but I really wouldn't be surprised if he personally signed off that headline to run with from the interview (the same was used on the television news). He's a former newspaper editor after all. This form of journalism is what I thought was starting to be considered old fashioned. I don't understand how he became the BBC's Media Editor and host of the most prestigious morning radio programme on the BBC, apart from having loads of connections and history in the publishing industry.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Free and open internet isn't under attack because major corporations want it that, it's because people want it that way. The average computer user is a non-programmer. Why would they want things more complicated for themselves? So where does the money flow? To the path of least resistance. While many companies are willing to oblige that thought process, it unfortunately creates the system that strips "free and open internet" away from us.
Clewza313 5y ago
> Third, a lot of Pichai's big bets have failed: Google Glass, Google Plus, Google Wave, Project Loon Every single one of these predates Pichai, who only became CEO in 2015: * Google Wave was already turned down in 2012 * Google Plus launched in 2011 and the writing was on the wall by 2015 * Google Glass consumer edition was discontinued in Jan 2015 before Pichai started * Loon is the only arguable exception; it was started in 2011 but only promoted into an official Bet during Pichai's tenure in 2018. However, it was also an experiment from day 1, not "the next big thing" like Wave/Plus/Glass were supposed to be.
- retox 5y ago
  Now you've seen how a "journalist" doesn't have the patience to spend 60 seconds searching for something you're knowledgeable about, will you (not you specifically) take as gospel anything they say about something you're not knowledgeable about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    I have to say, I find this bit amusing: "That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say." The last 4 years of US politics (and 20? of UK politics) have given the lie to that belief. [edit: added UK politics because they're just as bad]
    - Tarsul 5y ago
      It's the same with typical sales persons: Even though they constantly exaggerate, you want to believe (unless there's animosity). So you take it into account that they exaggerate, but not by as much as they do exaggerate. Which means it's still better for them to do it than not. At least that's my impression of these dynamics, would love good studies about it.
      - 5y ago
arpowers 5y ago
Google might be taking this PR angle as a psyop to position themselves as a savior of open internet instead of the enemy of it. They clearly are the latter.
marcodiego 5y ago
Combine this with "the coming war on general purpose computing"[0] , IME, DRM, difficulty to repair devices and computers that user has no control even on their car and soon we'll be living like on the dystopian essay "The right to read". [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...
javajosh 5y ago
What is (was) the free and open internet? I'd argue its people running their own servers - traditionally an x86 (plus RAM, disk, modem pipe and power) running a POSIX kernel running httpd, smptd, ftpd and maybe ircd. A static IPv4 address from ARIN (via an ISP) and a DNS name from ICANN (via a registrar). These are the necessary ingredients you must have, as an individual or a group, to participate in the "free and open internet". I'd argue that Facebook is just a natural extension of AWS, Digital Ocean or Github pages. Facebook takes away the DNS name, and they take away your content and put it behind an algorithm, which you can bribe to let your stuff through. I'd consider a difference of degree, not kind. Even those who go to the trouble of running their own physical server still use services like Google Analytics, which violate the privacy of every data consumer. Maybe not as bad as putting your data behind someone else's paywall and then paying them to expose it, but it's pretty bad. Since we use the web for literally every application now, it's a particularly worrying trend. My point is that if you want a 'free and open internet' then you need to make it easy for people own, understand and run ALL of these ingredients. Like, provide them by all by default for everyone's smartphone, and run servers on your smartphone! And give them reasonable defaults, with a first-year-free DNS name. A free static IPv6 address block. Default, svelte, little mobile friendly server daemons. Then let people make crazy HTML documents with their voice and self-publish them like in the old days! All the components are there, we just need to DO it.
Santosh83 5y ago
The "open" Internet is done for because in recent years most governments have realised that the natural culmination of an open Internet is in fact an open, cross-mingling, world culture, community and economy, and eventually, the deprecation of the traditional idea of nation states. And you can prise that control from their cold, dead hands. PS. Include mega-corps in 'nation states' above. They both want total control over the Internet. They will get it too, in some proportion. Because truly democratic forces are too weak and disorganised, as always.
eitland 5y ago
For all my scathing criticism of Google I actually wish them well. There is a whole lot of things they did right (and do right), only they are now often messing up even basics.
est 5y ago
As a casual website owner, I find Google is the main culprit. My original articles were buried under content farms full of copypastas. Lots of my URLs were either "Discovered – currently not indexed" or "Crawled - currently not indexed", but spam sites are happily searchable with the exact same content. And I don't want spend to fight SEO.
- the_biot 5y ago
  But you blame Google, not the SEO spammers?
  - ConceptJunkie 5y ago
    SEO spammers are exploiting a flawed system created by... Google.
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      Unless there is a flawless approach to stopping SEO that isn't something to blame them for as there would be literally nothing to do to stop SEO spammers!
broooder 5y ago
Nothingburger IMHO could find the same article written in the ‘70s. Where’s my self driving car?
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
"... and our attack goes according to the plan." - he added.
snowwrestler 5y ago
Does anyone think that Google cares about the free and open Internet anymore? I don’t mean they oppose it, I just mean it doesn’t seem like it’s on the list of things the company prioritizes. It sometimes seems like Google’s internal self-image is stuck in 2001, when they were an idealistic search engine company whose goal was to organize the world’s information. Today they are an ad company, running some office apps and cloud computing on the side. The transition has been great for revenue but it seems like they long ago sold the moral authority to make pronouncements about the free and open Internet.
- dkdk8283 5y ago
  Join G and masquerade as a zealot and you will soon be invited to off-campus chat networks where employees strategize how to cancel the next “asshole” on their radar. It’s sickening and they should all go to jail for it.
  - sanity31415 5y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    - dkdk8283 5y ago
      Happy to if you present a specific question.
      - perfect_wave 5y ago
        What kind of methods do they use to go about “cancelling the asshole”? What information are they accessing that they shouldn’t be? What kind of tooling are they misusing to do this? What are the results of their actions?
        GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        Imagine you built your life around these walled gardens and then they banned you.
istillwritecode 5y ago
I fully expect that Google will someday require you to login before you do a search. Disclaimer: I worked at Google for 12 years.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I fully expect Bing to implement it first by requiring you login to Edge to use search, and shortly before there will be some secret order requiring all search providers collect searches from everyone due to national security.
oldgregg 5y ago
Google will attack and subvert every nationalist politician around the world because they are existentially dependent on globalism and weak national borders. Anyone who is a nationalist is racist and hates freedom according to Google. Nevermind self-determination. China is their worse nightmare because they are not dumb enough to let profiteers monitor and manipulate their citizens. Other countries are waking up to the reality that allowing these American imperialist multinationals to monitor, control, and ultimately culturally rape their indigenous culture might not be a good thing. When he says a free and open internet is under attack it means that countries are waking up and taking power back from Google. Can't happen soon enough. Will be great for startups and decentralized platforms. Go to a foreign country and clone the big tech companies and build a good-enough solution so that the people will have an alternative when they are ready to kick FAANG out.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  Nationalism is followed by fascism quite easily, it o accident that many consider excessive nationalism to just be a kind of secular religion, with an easily route to toxicity, dogma, and racism. Look no further than the fact that nationalist movements have right wing ethno-state ambitions attached to them everywhere, usually with a return to “Greater X” where X is an older empire they use to have, usually when their faction was more ethnically dominant.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Are the Olympics part of a fascist propaganda machine? > Nationalism is followed by fascism quite easily It seems just as easily followed by other forms of totalitarianism as exemplified by the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Venezuela.
    - cromwellian 5y ago
      Yes. What do you think Hitler expected from the 1936 Berlin Olympics? What do you think Xi wanted out of the 2008 Olympics? Why did the East Germans, and other fascist states deliberately engage in ridiculous state supported athlete doping? Even Beijing today is abusing children in the hopes of national glory. The state puts kids through factory-like conditions to make athletes from a young childhood age, doesn't even give them beyond a 3rd grade education, because everything is maximized on winning for national glory. Franky, state-based olympic camps IMHO are borderline child abuse. Oh yes, the Olympics are 100% about nationalism and CCP glory for China, and indeed for many other nationalist authoritarian states. > easily followed by other forms of totalitarianism as exemplified by the USSR, China China under Xi is fascist. Mass rallies under a glorified leader for life. Calls to return to a mythic past of nationhood under national rejuvenation. What's the difference between Nuremberg rallies, and the mass rallies the CCP runs? The near constant glorification of the CCP and Xi, the huge number of young people in the party and at the rallies (almost 100 million people in the CCP Youth League). Let's look at some of the defining characteristics of Fascism: 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism. 2. Disregard for Human Rights. 3.Controlled Mass Media. 4. Obsession with National Security. #4 is especially good example of how China is using national security to crush Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and internal dissent, by claiming pretty much any thing they don't like is a national security issue. Thus, an 80 year old women with a protest sign on the street is arrested in Hong Kong for "national security" reasons. China under Deng might not have been Fascist, but under Xi, it's definitely trending that way.
crawsome 5y ago
he approved a censored search engine in China. No, Sundar. You don’t get an opinion here.
vfclists 5y ago
Free Internet - An internet where Spamhaus forces everyone to use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo or else not receive or send email reliably.
sebow 5y ago
that's very rich coming from google
cblconfederate 5y ago
as far as state actors are concerned, it's state propaganda that 's the greatest threat and big tech is actually facilitating this because it's structurally convenient for autocrats. For the rest, google is a company that can actually do things about the free internet, so actions are better than words here
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Faciliating is a downright weasel word to insinuate complicity. Power lines facilitate power outages - without the transport there would be no power to out. And where the heck does the "Because it is structurally convenient to autocrats" conclusion come from and what the hell does that even mean? On another note does anybody else notice the inherent contradiction and massive exploitability of the "state propaganda is a threat" line that is so common? Deciding what speech from foreign governments goes against their agenda and declaring it a threat is itself propaganda.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    > Faciliating is a downright weasel word to insinuate complicity. That's not ruled out. Big tech employs thousands of people who may or may not be bought out to cover the tracks of authoritarians, even if we assume (absurdly) that their leadership are saints. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-azerbaijan-ilham-aliyev https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-... > structurally convenient Social media are centralized, have no direct interest in the stability of the country they operate in, are not in any control from the users of the target country, are perceived as neutral by said users, YET they are in control of the government where they operate in, and certain countries often run campaigns targetted against their own citizens. They generally don't investigate such actions until after the fact, and in fact i ve only seen facebook doing somewhat serious attempts to catch them in the act e.g. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-september-report/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-coordinated-inaut...
benreesman 5y ago
I’ve never met a person inspired by what we thought the Internet would be in the 90s who isn’t sad that it went the way it did. I suspect the more idealistic of the cryptocurrency people will also feel nostalgic when Goldman and JP Morgan run blockchain in a few years. It’s extremely tempting, especially to technical people, to believe that some piece of technology will create net freedom and equality. The reality is more mundane: technology is just a fancy word for tool, and the only thing the guillotine ever freed anyone from was tomorrow.
- zeruch 5y ago
  "It’s extremely tempting, especially to technical people, to believe that some piece of technology will create net freedom and equality." I think this certainly used to be the case; when geeks ran the valley roost so to speak, there was capitalistic ambitions coupled/borne from a sincere interest in tech. Now the former drives the latter, with characteristic milquetoast results (this isn't to say that the tech interest now isn't sincere, just that it's "source" and how it's shaped is different). It's a subtle but critical shift in the drivers of the industry at an individual level, and it bubbles up through the firms those individuals build and try to sustain.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  Utopian thinking almost never comes to fruition because by definition it discounts a lot of negatives. It rarely comes from a place of first-principles reasoning about human behavior. And above all, human beings cannot see into the future so any vision is always incomplete and flawed. Nevertheless, as much as there are heaps of shit on the internet - digital surveillance, bottomless wells of inane addiction, hateful discourse, etc. - I’d say there is a net benefit overall, and where the 90s techno-optimists were merely wrong was in degree and concrete detail.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    The only real benefit I see is 1) Wikipedia, Sci-Hub, Archive/LibGen, and 2) the increase in general literacy that came from people commenting/posting. I think 2) gets underestimated a lot - 10 years ago you could recognize a lot of stupid comments by the fact that they capitalized every word or the grammar and spelling were horrific. Those people didn't stop posting, they learned how to express themselves well through practice.
LatteLazy 5y ago
We let too many morons on the net, now it's either give up freedom or give up democracy and the rule of law. Aside from an Internet "driving license" or tests before people are allowed to vote, I don't see how we can keep both. I liked a free Web too...
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  By not falling for the bullshit of anybody who says you need to give up freedom of information for security - they are lying to you from the start and plan only more lies and abuse of power. An internet driver's license is a terrible technically illiterate idea trying to cast itself as something reasonable. Who can I run over with my internet connection? How the hell would anybody check who is behind a terminal in the privacy of their own home? It would require somehow embedding an actual identifier in every last packet and ensuring it is always valid and isn't susceptible to replay or known plaintext attacks.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    I'd be happy to hear a third option. How do we have a working democracy if so many people believe fake news and we don't ban it?
wly_cdgr 5y ago
That's a laugh
b20000 5y ago
…warns of threat of no longer having control over the internet
b20000 5y ago
did they fix google docs and drive yet? asking for a friend
jb775 5y ago
...says the guy who happily agrees to direct and indirect mass censorship based around in-vogue leftist Silicon Valley politics.
- rfrey 5y ago
  It's only because he has indigestion from the undercooked babies the Martians made him eat.
freddealmeida 5y ago
Any speech like this is always requires the reader to add the speaker to the list of threats.
belter 5y ago
Ok so this is a PR interview, done due to the increased pressure Big Tech sees coming their way. Its always the largest companies with the largest share and encrusted monopolies the first ones talking about "freedom", "leveling the playing field", and providing "equal opportunities for all". They do that because they know that only regulatory measures can temper their current abuses. If there is a "level playing field" any other parameters of the game where they already have advantages will keep the outcomes biased in their direction. The discussion on internet freedom is a diversion on what should be seen as the main item out of the interview. Sadly this being a BBC interview, as usual it was kind of a softball... Here is a "level playing field" where the CEO from Google refused to commit to....Special Tax structures. When challenged did not commit to stop using tax havens. At 47 min and 17 sec of the Podcast... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09nxhrd https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09nxhrd
- refurb 5y ago
  This person gets it. Start from the beginning. You think Sundar just gets a call one day from a reporter about this topic and says “yeah, I’ll do an interview”? This article was generated by google. Their internal PR team thought it up and used their external agency to float the idea of the article (and an interview with Sundar!) to a bunch of reporters until someone took the bait (well, not bait, the reporter knows what’s up). And this is a small slice of the overall strategy google has put together to counter the antitrust action the US govt is pushing.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    Welcome to capitalism, where money can buy you your own story and a good reputation.
_user112 5y ago
Should've interviewed the AI. It has more opinion than he could ever hope of having.
TurkishPoptart 5y ago
This is astroturfing. The biggest threat to internet freedom is the company that Mr. Pichai is in charge of.
grillvogel 5y ago
threats to internet freedom brought on by his own company?
fleddr 5y ago
"Warns" of threats is a great title, as that is all he does. He's a great CEO. Has no outspoken opinion about anything yet maximizes financial results. It's what Google needs at this phase of its life cycle. The article dares to even call him an idealist. How so? He's too afraid to even directly mention the China issue, let alone take any responsibility for it. If you're too afraid to concretely even mention a human rights issue, how are you an idealist? When mildly pressed for their tax misbehavior, the comeback is that they no longer use the double dutch construction. An idealist would apologize for even ever using it, and pay back what you dodged. Instead, we're supposed to be happy that they pay some bare minimum now, which...get this...is more than most companies. How generous. An idealist has principles, stands for something, and will defend doing the right thing at any and all costs. He's the opposite of an idealist.
anm89 5y ago
Sundar Pichai warns of Sundar Pichai
mesozoic 5y ago
Funny position for a guy running a company doing a lot to restrict freedom of speech.
dalu 5y ago
Cookie wall didn't read. Can anyone sum it up? I'm so tired of those consent screens. Also not friendly aligned with that guy.
knolax 5y ago
Just a minute ago I had found that a piece of controversial media I used to watch was scrubbed from all Google services (youtube, search etc.). Had to use Yandex and Baidu to find it. They all have their masters, Google is the one only bold faced enough to pretend they represent all of the internet.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
Guy chiefly responsible for loss of internet freedom warns that his power is threatened.
ColinHayhurst 5y ago
My open letter to Sundar, in response to this interview, as a fellow search engine company CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819924

166 points by ptrkmhms 5y ago

From where I sit the #1 risk to the free and open internet these days is Google. Edit: two reasons: 1) Because adtech is destroying society. Surveillance is never good. Ads as funding smears absolutely everything with perverse incentives that act consistently against both the explicit wishes and implicit best-interests of the viewers, and (it seems moreso every year) society at large. 2) Google is doing everything it can to protect and defend their control over said adtech, using all mechanisms at its disposal including a monopoly on Search, almost a monopoly (and veto power) on what defines HTML (Blink not Chrome), and like 70% of mobile platform.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
I still believe arrest adtech made websites free for so many years. ( I mean literally not paying hard cash access it). Not everyone in the world has equal financial power as a US citizen.
acomjean 5y ago
How so? It seems that a search engine would need the internet to have as much information out there in the open to index and give us the results upon searching.. Because they are so dominate they exercise outsized control, but there are still a few others. Data behind paywalls/logins is useless to them.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  When they hide data you're obviously and explicitly looking for they are making the internet less open. Look at the google vs duckduckgo search results for this: "How a Convicted Terrorist used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Website to Identify Targets"
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Since I know how Google crawl and index work, and I know how the right-wing noise machine works, I suggest a very likely explanation is that Cernovich used Google webmaster tools to remove the URL from their index for the specific purpose of whipping conspiracy theories on Twitter.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      That’s an interesting theory, any data to support it? Has this Cernovich guy done stuff like this in the past?
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        I have as much data to support my theory as the other person does to support theirs. All we know is the page isn't in the results on Google. And yes, Cernovich has a history of PR stunts.
        Consultant32452 5y ago
        You might have a point if this wasn't just the most recent of a giant pile of censorship from Google. Medical doctors can't discuss possible treatments for COVID. Medical doctors can't discuss side effects from vaccines. Senate testimony where an alleged Ukrainian whistleblower is named is banned. If you even say the name, not even in any relevant context, you will get banned. The list goes on and on. There is nothing "open" about the Google web. But again, I don't believe there's anything I or anyone else could say that would change your mind.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        It’s a sad state of affairs. It’s like they keep saying “stop hitting me!” while they hit you. My little brother used to do that. Google isn’t big brother, Google is my little brother.
    - deleted 5y ago
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  The biggest issue is that Google Search kills its own sources, which is shortsighted. Google constantly steals manually curated quality content, and regurgitates it in Knowledge Graph without attribution, such that the people who did all the work to develop and curate that information aren't compensated. The end result: As the web Google stole from dies off, Google increasingly has worse, less accurate sources it has to draw from. Journalists are at the forefront of this, and you can see several countries moving to charge Google for lifting news content to combat this. But there's a lot of other sources on the web that probably won't be so lucky.
- neolog 5y ago
  > Data behind paywalls/logins is useless to them. Sites are often not behind a paywall if you reach them via google (and only google).
- erdo 5y ago
  Except of course Google is not a search engine company, Google is an advertising company
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    To this day I have no idea what that statement is supposed to express despite seeing it about a dozen times per week. Google makes money selling ads yes, but their core product is search. Like a newspaper, which does journalism, and also has an ad department, or a TV show, with ad breaks, or a sports broadcast. Do people think Google makes their search worse to... sell fewer ads?
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      It properly calls attention to what google’s primary purpose is. Its not search. A newspaper’s primary purpose is to inform the public, and make money while doing so. Googles primary purpose is not search, and to make money while doing so. Googles primary purpose is collect and sell data, and make money while doing so.
      - cromwellian 5y ago
        Google doesn’t sell data, and Google’s primary purpose is Search and organizing information, ads is just the way it’s funded. If the primary purpose was ada, then it would stop all of the wasteful spending on engineering projects with no relation to, and no hope of, making ad money.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        When those projects are found to not lock users and customers in Google ecosystem and/or not to bring ad revenue, those are axed with no remorse.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        You’re right on the not selling data directly. I should have been more precise. Google is in the business of collecting data and selling advertising using that data. For the purpose of making money. Search hasn’t been part of their purpose in decades. Let me ask you this, has search gotten better or worse in the last 5 - 10 years? Has their data collection gotten more invasive or less over the last 5 - 10 years? I think we both know what kind of company Google is once those questions are answered.
- passivate 5y ago
  Yes, while the web may seem "open" due to its fragmented nature of hosting, Google wants all content to reside in their own walled garden so it can quickly kill competition. AMP was a major play towards that. Also, all (?) their money makers are closed source and proprietary - which is just fine by me, but Google should own up to what they really are instead of projecting a fake "open" image of themselves.
bsmith0 5y ago
These are the most predictable HN comments
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Google has actively replaced the free and open internet with one that is more convenient and brand flattering as soon as mass media started to fight against becoming a legacy product.
- ditonal 5y ago
  The article is a fluff piece that's comically uncritical of Google. There's obvious hypocrisy for a company that's done all sorts of user-antagonistic things to internet users as Google has, from Google AMP stealing traffic, to PRISM actively violating the 4th amendment, to Dragonfly explicitly enabling censorship. Google's gotten away with the hypocrisy due to a relentless PR engine. Maybe if you don't like predictable Hacker News snark, downvote the PR "submarine" pieces from the front page, because there's nothing of value in this article and "predictable" critique is the best it deserves.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Please don't distort the meaning of words. PR "submarine" pieces are a very real thing, but they are exactly what the phrase suggests — an article put out by a corporate PR department for publication. This was literally an interview by a real reporter, edited into an article. You might not like that the interviewer wasn't antagonistic (let's be real — most aren't!), but this is not a "PR submarine piece" by any sane definition of the phrase.
    - travoc 5y ago
      Reprinting a single person’s viewpoints without critique or counterpoint isn’t news or “real reporting.” It’s still just a PR piece.
      - neolog 5y ago
renewiltord 5y ago
So, in theory, you have some metric that places Google up at #1. For that to be non-trivial, you must have more than one member of the set evaluated. And for it to be meaningful, maybe you have a top ten or you have evaluated less than ten. All right, then, enlighten us with your top ten. And if you haven’t already, I’d like to see where on the top ten you’ve put regimes like the Chinese government and the US government.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Ahead of all the regulation happy governments, the walled gardens, and spam/trolls making areas of the web that are not resourced largely unusable?
- nuker 5y ago
  Google is Skynet!
- denkmoon 5y ago
  Governmental incompetence exceeds their ability to regulate. Google have the capacity to pull off a lot more than Governments. Google would have a walled garden if they could afford to lose the users and manufacturers that would revolt against it.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Google's main product is letting people find stuff on the web. What benefit would a walled garden be to them unless everything was on Google infrastructure? They would need to control everything. They lose the most if the internet balkanizes.
    - denkmoon 5y ago
      Google's main product is ads, not search. Search (and Mail, and Video) are just mechanisms for offering ads. By balkanising the internet they can have a monopoly over offering ads to certain target groups that fall within their walled garden.
      - username90 5y ago
        That isn't how this works, Google doesn't have good enough content to compete with other tech giants without the open web. If Google kills the web then Google kills itself. Most of their money comes from their search web page and not the ads from other sites, so people browsing the web is their main source of revenue. Their other sites are big, yes, but not big enough to make them one of the few most valuable companies in the world. Anyway, Google works hard to make the open web competitive with all the walled gardens around. When they do that they put up some fences to make the experience a bit more like walled gardens, but the open web is still just a few seconds and a click away.
Spooky23 5y ago
Google is literally the only tech giant with an interest in the open internet. Facebook scored the mortal wound on the web — they reinvented a bigger, badder AOL closed garden.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Just like how YouTube has become a more open and free platform in their care. Or how search results have become more open and free since they dominated market share.
  - bluthund 5y ago
    Do you guys factor the deplatforming they do into this or are you not aware that they are heavily involved in censorship on their platforms
    - logicchains 5y ago
      The person you're replying to was likely being sarcastic.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      Let me guess.. you're a huge fan of Tim Pool and the likes who constantly talked about how they are oppressed WHILE still on YouTube.
      - iratewizard 5y ago
        Let me guess... You're not a huge fan of free speech because your college professor told you it was an outdated concept WHILE still using it as a shield to spew his moronic views.
        ryder9 5y ago
        private platforms dont have 'free speech' you moron
ignoramous 5y ago
To be fair, Pichai's quote is taken out of context. In his capacity as Alphabet CEO, he worries about neutrality of the interconnects. TFA goes: > And, when I asked about whether the Chinese model of the internet - much more authoritarian, big on surveillance - is in the ascendant, Pichai said the free and open internet "is being attacked". Importantly, he didn't refer to China directly but he went on to say: "None of our major products and services are available in China." Google does run at least one semi-independent group to tackle such censorship, disinformation, propaganda, and abuse https://jigsaw.google.com/ https://jigsaw.google.com/
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  Call me a cynic but I’m 99% sure that group of Google’s is probably just as ideologically progressive as Google and not independent in any substantial way. Everything from that link reads like progressive ad-copy.
- adolph 5y ago
  Toxic language online silences important voices. We’re exploring how machine learning can reduce toxicity online and create more space for healthy conversation. Throughout this report we use the term “toxicity,” defined as rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable language that is likely to make someone leave a discussion. We specifically use the term toxicity, as opposed to words like “abuse” or “hate speech” for both practical and scientific reasons. https://jigsaw.google.com/the-current/toxicity/ https://jigsaw.google.com/the-current/toxicity/
  - seriousquestion 5y ago
    > “toxicity,” defined as rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable language that is likely to make someone leave a discussion. We specifically use the term toxicity, as opposed to words like “abuse” or “hate speech” for both practical and scientific reasons. Scientific reasons? There's nothing scientific about a term so undefined that every person can have their own custom definition.
  - justshowpost 5y ago
brightball 5y ago
IMO it’s actually Twitter.
Vixel 5y ago
Agreed. The only reason he cares it’s because it cost more to sell their ads on proprietary services

iratewizard 5y ago

Google attacks the "free and open internet" globally far more than a backwater country that restricts its citizens internet usage along with a million other things.

eyeball 5y ago

should have posted it as an amp link f google

rdpintqogeogsaa 5y ago

Pot, meet kettle.

throwawaysea 5y ago

This article feels like a rosy, uncritical review of Google under Pichai. Even the opening sentence here is full of tone deaf hypocrisy: > [Sundar Pichai] says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted. Like when Google, with more influence than most countries, censors content on YouTube or the Google App Store? Google’s manipulation of information amounts to political propaganda to those who aren’t aligned with their prevailing views - naturally many countries will balk at letting that kind of foreign interference/control influence their own societies. And I can’t help but view Pichai’s perspective on taxes as a form of convenient regulatory capture / barrier to competition: > I put this to Pichai, who said that Google no longer uses this scheme, is one of the world's biggest taxpayers, and complies with tax laws in every country in which it operates. The article also talks about the activist streak of Google and its employees but doesn’t challenge it: > With more than 100,000 staff, many of them hugely opinionated on internal message boards, and activist in nature, this is just impossible to control. There is a tension between Google genuinely embracing cognitive diversity by having people of all persuasions among its global staff, and at the same time really standing up for particular issues as a company. I don’t think this tension is actually present. Google is a dyed in the wool Bay Area tech company. I don’t think it has employees of “all persuasions” in any great numbers unless they are looking at only the left side of the American political spectrum.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Google doesn't give interviews with executives to outlets that ask critical questions. (Neither does Apple, pretty famously.) Executive interviews tend to lean more towards press releases than journalism.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  MKBHD can be very critical of Apple.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago

Google itself is actively restricting the flow of information. It is really quite sad how Google's formerly excellent search product, has morphed into a tool for censorship, and surveillance capitalism, and in the process, degraded its accuracy significantly.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

Once a company is large and entrenched, regulation is how you stay in power. You create enough Byzantine rules that basically only the largest company can hire the lawyers and comply. It’s an effective way to kill off competition. Google is ready to start encouraging regulation.

erdo 5y ago
Why is this being down voted? It's fairly standard practice for a large company isn't it?

m1sta_ 5y ago

I do hope that people read the article and comment on its contents rather than just getting stuck in a loop of "Google bad".

0xbadcafebee 5y ago
Nobody likes to challenge their own beliefs - especially when it's a negative belief. (I could provide links to studies, but I like to think the downvotes prove my point for me)
- tux1968 5y ago
  And upvotes would equally reinforce the validity of your claim for you. Since you're likely as reluctant to challenge your own beliefs as anyone else.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    This is like inception for self fulfilling prophecy
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wutbrodo 5y ago
Haha where do you think you are There're lots of things about HN that make it better than many other fora, but its collective wild-eyed, frothing reaction to literally the word Google is not one of them. You may as well be on 4chan for threads like these
pessimizer 5y ago
Why? The only reason Pichai's comments are important is because he works for a company that is dangerous for internet freedom. Their only use is in predicting Google's business strategies and defending against them. This might as well be a place to talk about Google in general, or Pichai in general irt "internet freedom."

thr0w72594 5y ago

The criticism here is entirely self-serving and hypocritical. Why should Google be able to undemocratically decide which parts of the internet it allows, yet deride governments for doing the same thing? At least the governments ostensibly have the best interests of their people in mind. And even the worst "authoritarian" governments need to answer to their population enough to keep legitimacy. There is no free and open internet, and Google is part of the group of corporations that help prop up the big tech cartel that help kill off each others' competitors, share employee blacklists, and intentionally sacrifice the quality of their product to push their Bay Area bourgeoisie politics around the globe.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Watched the interview and Sundar Pichai sounded so defensive and unauthentic. Why do they do these interviews? I gained absolutely nothing from it.

Zenst 5y ago
That is the position of many a CEO of a large company, akin to politicians in that they say lots without actually saying anything and by the time you realise that they have said nothing, they have gone. For example "He says many countries are restricting the flow of information, and the model is often taken for granted." Shifts any blame elsewhere in a way that does not detail this model or outlines any of the issues that define the restrictions and how they effect Google. So for all we know, he could be on about data protection laws like GDPR or the like and paints them as bad without going into any details of the pro's or con's. Remember some law/restriction that is bad for Google may actually be good for the users. Also when I see the term "free internet" I do feel it is a misnomer in many ways, more so in the context it is used.

Zenst 5y ago

I read the article and shame the BBC went for the small sound-bite click-bait title. Most of the article is about other aspects, from AI, Quantum computing, corporation TAX and the title per-say does not do the article justice. With that in mind, it seems most comments appear along the lines of a response to the title and not the content and is just going to clog Dang up with work. I personally found the aspect and questioning about corporation TAX more insightful and perhaps would of been a better sound-bite of a title.

tweetle_beetle 5y ago
Amol Rajan thrives on being contrary and questioning designed to provoke. You could see from his other questions that they were purely designed to create headlines in a similar way: > When I invited Pichai to commit there and then to Google pulling out of all tax havens immediately, he didn't take up the offer. > In a very revealing quick-fire round of questions, we discover he doesn't eat meat, drives a Tesla, reveres Alan Turing, wishes he'd met Stephen Hawking, and is jealous of Jeff Bezos's space mission. The headline really is irrelevant to the majority of the interview, but I really wouldn't be surprised if he personally signed off that headline to run with from the interview (the same was used on the television news). He's a former newspaper editor after all. This form of journalism is what I thought was starting to be considered old fashioned. I don't understand how he became the BBC's Media Editor and host of the most prestigious morning radio programme on the BBC, apart from having loads of connections and history in the publishing industry.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

Free and open internet isn't under attack because major corporations want it that, it's because people want it that way. The average computer user is a non-programmer. Why would they want things more complicated for themselves? So where does the money flow? To the path of least resistance. While many companies are willing to oblige that thought process, it unfortunately creates the system that strips "free and open internet" away from us.

Clewza313 5y ago

> Third, a lot of Pichai's big bets have failed: Google Glass, Google Plus, Google Wave, Project Loon Every single one of these predates Pichai, who only became CEO in 2015: * Google Wave was already turned down in 2012 * Google Plus launched in 2011 and the writing was on the wall by 2015 * Google Glass consumer edition was discontinued in Jan 2015 before Pichai started * Loon is the only arguable exception; it was started in 2011 but only promoted into an official Bet during Pichai's tenure in 2018. However, it was also an experiment from day 1, not "the next big thing" like Wave/Plus/Glass were supposed to be.

retox 5y ago
Now you've seen how a "journalist" doesn't have the patience to spend 60 seconds searching for something you're knowledgeable about, will you (not you specifically) take as gospel anything they say about something you're not knowledgeable about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  I have to say, I find this bit amusing: "That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say." The last 4 years of US politics (and 20? of UK politics) have given the lie to that belief. [edit: added UK politics because they're just as bad]
  - Tarsul 5y ago
    It's the same with typical sales persons: Even though they constantly exaggerate, you want to believe (unless there's animosity). So you take it into account that they exaggerate, but not by as much as they do exaggerate. Which means it's still better for them to do it than not. At least that's my impression of these dynamics, would love good studies about it.
    - 5y ago

arpowers 5y ago

Google might be taking this PR angle as a psyop to position themselves as a savior of open internet instead of the enemy of it. They clearly are the latter.

marcodiego 5y ago

Combine this with "the coming war on general purpose computing"[0] , IME, DRM, difficulty to repair devices and computers that user has no control even on their car and soon we'll be living like on the dystopian essay "The right to read". [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...

javajosh 5y ago

What is (was) the free and open internet? I'd argue its people running their own servers - traditionally an x86 (plus RAM, disk, modem pipe and power) running a POSIX kernel running httpd, smptd, ftpd and maybe ircd. A static IPv4 address from ARIN (via an ISP) and a DNS name from ICANN (via a registrar). These are the necessary ingredients you must have, as an individual or a group, to participate in the "free and open internet". I'd argue that Facebook is just a natural extension of AWS, Digital Ocean or Github pages. Facebook takes away the DNS name, and they take away your content and put it behind an algorithm, which you can bribe to let your stuff through. I'd consider a difference of degree, not kind. Even those who go to the trouble of running their own physical server still use services like Google Analytics, which violate the privacy of every data consumer. Maybe not as bad as putting your data behind someone else's paywall and then paying them to expose it, but it's pretty bad. Since we use the web for literally every application now, it's a particularly worrying trend. My point is that if you want a 'free and open internet' then you need to make it easy for people own, understand and run ALL of these ingredients. Like, provide them by all by default for everyone's smartphone, and run servers on your smartphone! And give them reasonable defaults, with a first-year-free DNS name. A free static IPv6 address block. Default, svelte, little mobile friendly server daemons. Then let people make crazy HTML documents with their voice and self-publish them like in the old days! All the components are there, we just need to DO it.

Santosh83 5y ago

The "open" Internet is done for because in recent years most governments have realised that the natural culmination of an open Internet is in fact an open, cross-mingling, world culture, community and economy, and eventually, the deprecation of the traditional idea of nation states. And you can prise that control from their cold, dead hands. PS. Include mega-corps in 'nation states' above. They both want total control over the Internet. They will get it too, in some proportion. Because truly democratic forces are too weak and disorganised, as always.

eitland 5y ago

For all my scathing criticism of Google I actually wish them well. There is a whole lot of things they did right (and do right), only they are now often messing up even basics.

est 5y ago

As a casual website owner, I find Google is the main culprit. My original articles were buried under content farms full of copypastas. Lots of my URLs were either "Discovered – currently not indexed" or "Crawled - currently not indexed", but spam sites are happily searchable with the exact same content. And I don't want spend to fight SEO.

the_biot 5y ago
But you blame Google, not the SEO spammers?
- ConceptJunkie 5y ago
  SEO spammers are exploiting a flawed system created by... Google.
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    Unless there is a flawless approach to stopping SEO that isn't something to blame them for as there would be literally nothing to do to stop SEO spammers!

broooder 5y ago

Nothingburger IMHO could find the same article written in the ‘70s. Where’s my self driving car?

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

"... and our attack goes according to the plan." - he added.

snowwrestler 5y ago

Does anyone think that Google cares about the free and open Internet anymore? I don’t mean they oppose it, I just mean it doesn’t seem like it’s on the list of things the company prioritizes. It sometimes seems like Google’s internal self-image is stuck in 2001, when they were an idealistic search engine company whose goal was to organize the world’s information. Today they are an ad company, running some office apps and cloud computing on the side. The transition has been great for revenue but it seems like they long ago sold the moral authority to make pronouncements about the free and open Internet.

dkdk8283 5y ago
Join G and masquerade as a zealot and you will soon be invited to off-campus chat networks where employees strategize how to cancel the next “asshole” on their radar. It’s sickening and they should all go to jail for it.
- sanity31415 5y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - dkdk8283 5y ago
    Happy to if you present a specific question.
    - perfect_wave 5y ago
      What kind of methods do they use to go about “cancelling the asshole”? What information are they accessing that they shouldn’t be? What kind of tooling are they misusing to do this? What are the results of their actions?
      - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        Imagine you built your life around these walled gardens and then they banned you.

istillwritecode 5y ago

I fully expect that Google will someday require you to login before you do a search. Disclaimer: I worked at Google for 12 years.

encryptluks2 5y ago
I fully expect Bing to implement it first by requiring you login to Edge to use search, and shortly before there will be some secret order requiring all search providers collect searches from everyone due to national security.

oldgregg 5y ago

Google will attack and subvert every nationalist politician around the world because they are existentially dependent on globalism and weak national borders. Anyone who is a nationalist is racist and hates freedom according to Google. Nevermind self-determination. China is their worse nightmare because they are not dumb enough to let profiteers monitor and manipulate their citizens. Other countries are waking up to the reality that allowing these American imperialist multinationals to monitor, control, and ultimately culturally rape their indigenous culture might not be a good thing. When he says a free and open internet is under attack it means that countries are waking up and taking power back from Google. Can't happen soon enough. Will be great for startups and decentralized platforms. Go to a foreign country and clone the big tech companies and build a good-enough solution so that the people will have an alternative when they are ready to kick FAANG out.

cromwellian 5y ago
Nationalism is followed by fascism quite easily, it o accident that many consider excessive nationalism to just be a kind of secular religion, with an easily route to toxicity, dogma, and racism. Look no further than the fact that nationalist movements have right wing ethno-state ambitions attached to them everywhere, usually with a return to “Greater X” where X is an older empire they use to have, usually when their faction was more ethnically dominant.
- adolph 5y ago
  Are the Olympics part of a fascist propaganda machine? > Nationalism is followed by fascism quite easily It seems just as easily followed by other forms of totalitarianism as exemplified by the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Venezuela.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    Yes. What do you think Hitler expected from the 1936 Berlin Olympics? What do you think Xi wanted out of the 2008 Olympics? Why did the East Germans, and other fascist states deliberately engage in ridiculous state supported athlete doping? Even Beijing today is abusing children in the hopes of national glory. The state puts kids through factory-like conditions to make athletes from a young childhood age, doesn't even give them beyond a 3rd grade education, because everything is maximized on winning for national glory. Franky, state-based olympic camps IMHO are borderline child abuse. Oh yes, the Olympics are 100% about nationalism and CCP glory for China, and indeed for many other nationalist authoritarian states. > easily followed by other forms of totalitarianism as exemplified by the USSR, China China under Xi is fascist. Mass rallies under a glorified leader for life. Calls to return to a mythic past of nationhood under national rejuvenation. What's the difference between Nuremberg rallies, and the mass rallies the CCP runs? The near constant glorification of the CCP and Xi, the huge number of young people in the party and at the rallies (almost 100 million people in the CCP Youth League). Let's look at some of the defining characteristics of Fascism: 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism. 2. Disregard for Human Rights. 3.Controlled Mass Media. 4. Obsession with National Security. #4 is especially good example of how China is using national security to crush Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and internal dissent, by claiming pretty much any thing they don't like is a national security issue. Thus, an 80 year old women with a protest sign on the street is arrested in Hong Kong for "national security" reasons. China under Deng might not have been Fascist, but under Xi, it's definitely trending that way.

crawsome 5y ago

he approved a censored search engine in China. No, Sundar. You don’t get an opinion here.

vfclists 5y ago

Free Internet - An internet where Spamhaus forces everyone to use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo or else not receive or send email reliably.

sebow 5y ago

that's very rich coming from google

cblconfederate 5y ago

as far as state actors are concerned, it's state propaganda that 's the greatest threat and big tech is actually facilitating this because it's structurally convenient for autocrats. For the rest, google is a company that can actually do things about the free internet, so actions are better than words here

Nasrudith 5y ago
Faciliating is a downright weasel word to insinuate complicity. Power lines facilitate power outages - without the transport there would be no power to out. And where the heck does the "Because it is structurally convenient to autocrats" conclusion come from and what the hell does that even mean? On another note does anybody else notice the inherent contradiction and massive exploitability of the "state propaganda is a threat" line that is so common? Deciding what speech from foreign governments goes against their agenda and declaring it a threat is itself propaganda.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  > Faciliating is a downright weasel word to insinuate complicity. That's not ruled out. Big tech employs thousands of people who may or may not be bought out to cover the tracks of authoritarians, even if we assume (absurdly) that their leadership are saints. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-azerbaijan-ilham-aliyev https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-... > structurally convenient Social media are centralized, have no direct interest in the stability of the country they operate in, are not in any control from the users of the target country, are perceived as neutral by said users, YET they are in control of the government where they operate in, and certain countries often run campaigns targetted against their own citizens. They generally don't investigate such actions until after the fact, and in fact i ve only seen facebook doing somewhat serious attempts to catch them in the act e.g. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-september-report/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-coordinated-inaut...

benreesman 5y ago

I’ve never met a person inspired by what we thought the Internet would be in the 90s who isn’t sad that it went the way it did. I suspect the more idealistic of the cryptocurrency people will also feel nostalgic when Goldman and JP Morgan run blockchain in a few years. It’s extremely tempting, especially to technical people, to believe that some piece of technology will create net freedom and equality. The reality is more mundane: technology is just a fancy word for tool, and the only thing the guillotine ever freed anyone from was tomorrow.

zeruch 5y ago
"It’s extremely tempting, especially to technical people, to believe that some piece of technology will create net freedom and equality." I think this certainly used to be the case; when geeks ran the valley roost so to speak, there was capitalistic ambitions coupled/borne from a sincere interest in tech. Now the former drives the latter, with characteristic milquetoast results (this isn't to say that the tech interest now isn't sincere, just that it's "source" and how it's shaped is different). It's a subtle but critical shift in the drivers of the industry at an individual level, and it bubbles up through the firms those individuals build and try to sustain.
arcturus17 5y ago
Utopian thinking almost never comes to fruition because by definition it discounts a lot of negatives. It rarely comes from a place of first-principles reasoning about human behavior. And above all, human beings cannot see into the future so any vision is always incomplete and flawed. Nevertheless, as much as there are heaps of shit on the internet - digital surveillance, bottomless wells of inane addiction, hateful discourse, etc. - I’d say there is a net benefit overall, and where the 90s techno-optimists were merely wrong was in degree and concrete detail.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  The only real benefit I see is 1) Wikipedia, Sci-Hub, Archive/LibGen, and 2) the increase in general literacy that came from people commenting/posting. I think 2) gets underestimated a lot - 10 years ago you could recognize a lot of stupid comments by the fact that they capitalized every word or the grammar and spelling were horrific. Those people didn't stop posting, they learned how to express themselves well through practice.

LatteLazy 5y ago

We let too many morons on the net, now it's either give up freedom or give up democracy and the rule of law. Aside from an Internet "driving license" or tests before people are allowed to vote, I don't see how we can keep both. I liked a free Web too...

Nasrudith 5y ago
By not falling for the bullshit of anybody who says you need to give up freedom of information for security - they are lying to you from the start and plan only more lies and abuse of power. An internet driver's license is a terrible technically illiterate idea trying to cast itself as something reasonable. Who can I run over with my internet connection? How the hell would anybody check who is behind a terminal in the privacy of their own home? It would require somehow embedding an actual identifier in every last packet and ensuring it is always valid and isn't susceptible to replay or known plaintext attacks.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  I'd be happy to hear a third option. How do we have a working democracy if so many people believe fake news and we don't ban it?

wly_cdgr 5y ago

That's a laugh

b20000 5y ago

…warns of threat of no longer having control over the internet

b20000 5y ago

did they fix google docs and drive yet? asking for a friend

jb775 5y ago

...says the guy who happily agrees to direct and indirect mass censorship based around in-vogue leftist Silicon Valley politics.

rfrey 5y ago
It's only because he has indigestion from the undercooked babies the Martians made him eat.

freddealmeida 5y ago

Any speech like this is always requires the reader to add the speaker to the list of threats.

belter 5y ago

Ok so this is a PR interview, done due to the increased pressure Big Tech sees coming their way. Its always the largest companies with the largest share and encrusted monopolies the first ones talking about "freedom", "leveling the playing field", and providing "equal opportunities for all". They do that because they know that only regulatory measures can temper their current abuses. If there is a "level playing field" any other parameters of the game where they already have advantages will keep the outcomes biased in their direction. The discussion on internet freedom is a diversion on what should be seen as the main item out of the interview. Sadly this being a BBC interview, as usual it was kind of a softball... Here is a "level playing field" where the CEO from Google refused to commit to....Special Tax structures. When challenged did not commit to stop using tax havens. At 47 min and 17 sec of the Podcast... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09nxhrd https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09nxhrd

refurb 5y ago
This person gets it. Start from the beginning. You think Sundar just gets a call one day from a reporter about this topic and says “yeah, I’ll do an interview”? This article was generated by google. Their internal PR team thought it up and used their external agency to float the idea of the article (and an interview with Sundar!) to a bunch of reporters until someone took the bait (well, not bait, the reporter knows what’s up). And this is a small slice of the overall strategy google has put together to counter the antitrust action the US govt is pushing.
- beckman466 5y ago
  Welcome to capitalism, where money can buy you your own story and a good reputation.

_user112 5y ago

Should've interviewed the AI. It has more opinion than he could ever hope of having.

TurkishPoptart 5y ago

This is astroturfing. The biggest threat to internet freedom is the company that Mr. Pichai is in charge of.

grillvogel 5y ago

threats to internet freedom brought on by his own company?

fleddr 5y ago

"Warns" of threats is a great title, as that is all he does. He's a great CEO. Has no outspoken opinion about anything yet maximizes financial results. It's what Google needs at this phase of its life cycle. The article dares to even call him an idealist. How so? He's too afraid to even directly mention the China issue, let alone take any responsibility for it. If you're too afraid to concretely even mention a human rights issue, how are you an idealist? When mildly pressed for their tax misbehavior, the comeback is that they no longer use the double dutch construction. An idealist would apologize for even ever using it, and pay back what you dodged. Instead, we're supposed to be happy that they pay some bare minimum now, which...get this...is more than most companies. How generous. An idealist has principles, stands for something, and will defend doing the right thing at any and all costs. He's the opposite of an idealist.

anm89 5y ago

Sundar Pichai warns of Sundar Pichai

mesozoic 5y ago

Funny position for a guy running a company doing a lot to restrict freedom of speech.

dalu 5y ago

Cookie wall didn't read. Can anyone sum it up? I'm so tired of those consent screens. Also not friendly aligned with that guy.

knolax 5y ago

Just a minute ago I had found that a piece of controversial media I used to watch was scrubbed from all Google services (youtube, search etc.). Had to use Yandex and Baidu to find it. They all have their masters, Google is the one only bold faced enough to pretend they represent all of the internet.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

Guy chiefly responsible for loss of internet freedom warns that his power is threatened.

ColinHayhurst 5y ago

My open letter to Sundar, in response to this interview, as a fellow search engine company CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819924