Google: friend or foe to the open internet?

It's good that Google's chiefs support web freedom – but given the company's size, we need to keep an eye on it

'Google's evangelism for the power of open and linked data, while sincere and infectious, can be a risk too.' Photograph: Martin Keene/PA

Threats to the open internet from governments and corporations have never before been so grave, Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, told the Guardian in an interview on Sunday:

"There are very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world. I am more worried than I have been in the past … it's scary."

The list of threats to the net Brin cites is compelling. On one side, there are new "walled gardens" hived off from the open internet, unsearchable domains created and controlled by companies such as Apple and Facebook. These are a particular concern for Google as content held within Facebook's domain, or within apps, are inaccessible to the site's crawling software and so don't appear in Google's index.

 

This is a loss of commercial power for Google, and potentially a loss of future revenue. The growth of Facebook's traffic and reach is also a direct threat, as people start to navigate the web through social networks rather than search – Facebook traffic now occasionally overtakes even that from Google on sites like the Guardian.

 

With quarterly profits of $2.9bn relying on Google being the world's search provider of choice, there are as clear commercial reasons for Brin and Google to oppose the growth of closed domains.

 

But Brin's concerns for the open internet go further, to areas where it's difficult to see ulterior motives for Google's commitments. He lists the efforts of countries such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia to restrict the internet, and even Hollywood studios lobbying for legislation such asSopa and Pipa to restrict illegal downloading.

 

While some of the cost of enforcing such acts would fall on Google, the site's founders appear to have a genuine commitment to openness, typified by the decision to leave China and to voluntarily publish some open information. Google receives government requests to take down content from around 10,000 sites a year, and the company lists how many it receives from each government and how many it complies with. Governments and law enforcement agencies also ask for data on tens of thousands of users a year, and Google complies with around three-quarters of these.

 

The open net is certainly in need of friends, and few come more powerful than Google – but it needs to be careful, as good intentions are not enough. Owing to its sheer scale, Google has the ability to cause problems for the open internet – whether it intends to or not – and avoiding doing so may prove difficult.

 

The biggest risk is Google's determination to crack social media, most recently with Google+, which is being aggressively marketed to Google account holders and is receiving favourable treatment in search results in the US. Adding a social layer to search means different users get ever more different results to similar (or identical) searches.

 

This has the potential to split the internet into little "bubbles" of people with similar interests or views, making serendipity or finding dissonant views an ever-rarer experience – practical changes as well as legal ones can weaken the fabric of the open internet.

 

Google's evangelism for the power of open and linked data, while sincere and infectious, can be a risk too: its attempts to photograph every street across Europe for its Street View feature has met with opposition in many countries, and has stalled its efforts in some.

 

An earlier Google effort at social networking, Buzz, was greeted with widespread anger after it made the people in users' email contact lists public. Google quickly changed how the network operated (and eventually canned the product), but the farrago showed the gap between Silicon Valley technologists' enthusiasm for the potential of technology and some of their users' expectations of privacy.

 

The scale of information Google has on its users is breathtaking, and a treasure trove for any hacker or oppressive government. Google's security against the former is famously strong – and governments are generally only able to get Google information through legal requests, and those from autocratic regimes aren't met.

 

Google's chiefs are, and should be welcomed as, evangelists for and supporters of the open internet. But given the company's scale and importance to the everyday operation of the web, Google's mistakes or oversights could have far worse consequences than the bad intentions of others. Google can be a friend to the open internet movement – but a friend worth keeping an eye on.