Certain governments have managed to clamp down on the access their citizens have to the Internet. While this is worrying, Google co-founder Sergey Brin says that “walled gardens” such as Facebook and the App Store are obstacles in the way of further innovation and freedom on the web.
“There’s a lot to be lost,” he said. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it. The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”
Brin also criticized Facebook for taking in Gmail contacts over the years but now allowing for easy transfer of data from their service.
Source: Guardian
