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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 n

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
      [deleted]
    - Consultant32452 5y ago
      I don't believe there's anything I or anyone else could say that would change your mind.
- 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

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
    [deleted]
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    I don't believe there's anything I or anyone else could say that would change your mind.
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