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Google says its new wireless service will operate on a small scale, providing a new way for relatively few people make calls, trade texts, and access the good old internet via their smartphones. But the implications are enormous. 
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Cockroaches are some of the most resilient creatures on earth. They can live for 45 minutes without air and over a month without food. Cutting their heads off won’t even kill them—at least not immediately. Their bodies can live on for several days without their heads.
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In response to a recent legal decision in Europe, Google has released a new form for its European users that will allow them to request that links to certain articles about them be removed from the search engine. While European privacy advocates who have been pushing for a "right to be forgotten" may applaud this effort, the impact on the flow of information across the Internet is substantial. As Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School puts it, "The most important harm of this decision is not to the search engine companies, but to the public at large, and its ability to find accurate public information." Rather than an open and public exchange of information, Europe's new law injects an online censor to govern the accessibility of freely available public information.
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How come Facebook is free of charge yet Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire? Google is also free of charge, yet its 2013 revenue was put at over $59bn. Do users know how those appealing, free services have become top ten global multinationals, and how do we finally pay for our consumption?
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As literally everything becomes connected, we'll stop thinking of the Internet as something that exists on a computer or phone.
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The other day the German minister of justice, Heiko Maas, was asked in an interview how often he is using Google to crawl the Internet. His answer: "Everyday and in an exorbitant manner. Therefore, unfortunately, I am part of the problem." The way the Social Democrat was describing his digital behavior was shedding light on the uneasiness that descends upon Germans when using Google services -- whether it is the search engine, whether it is Gmail, Google Maps, Google Translate or anything else Google. The Internet giant has not only become ubiquitous. Google has become inescapable. When looking something up on the Internet, 90 percent of Germans are using Google -- that is significantly more than the worldwide average of roughly 70 percent. But Germans do it with remorse. They feel guilty.
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There is no mystery why libertarians love the Internet and all the freedom-enhancing applications, from open source software to Bitcoin, that thrive in its nurturing embrace. The Internet routes around censorship. It enables peer-to-peer connections that scoff at arbitrary geographical boundaries. It provides infinite access to do-it-yourself information. It fuels dreams of liberation from totalitarian oppression. Give everyone a smartphone, and dictators will fall! (Hell, you can even download the code that will let you 3-D print a gun.)
jean lievens's insight:
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How Facebook and Google are killing the classic Internet and reinventing it in their image
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At a time when the business strategies of large players like Google, Facebook, Netflix and others seek to leverage the power of social sharing, but then privatize and monetize the outcomes, you can be sure that we will see brazen new initiatives to privatize elements of the open Web. As Cory Doctorow points out, your browser will be able to say, “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” For more background on HTML5, here's a backgrounder piece by EFF.
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