14 DAY TRIAL // Sergey Brin rarely posts something publicly on Google+ and, when he does, it's either photos from the places he's been to or about Google's more experimental projects. This time around though, he's posting to declare his admiration for Facebook and Apple.
"I have always admired Apple’s products. In fact, I am writing this post on an Imac and using an Apple keyboard I have cherished for the past seven years," he writes.
"Likewise, Facebook has helped to connect hundreds of millions of people, has been a key tool for political expression and has been instrumental to the Arab Spring. Both have made key contributions to the free flow of information around the world," he added.
Which is all well and nice, but it's not something someone in his position starts declaring publicly even if it's true. There is a reason for this as Brin is trying to add a bit more context, in an article in the Guardian in which he is quoted.
The article focuses on internet freedom and the threats to it, increasingly aggressive governments, increasingly aggressive companies pushing for broad copyright protection and, finally, companies walling off the internet.
Brin believes these are the main concerns for internet freedom, but he says the article makes it look like they're all on the same level which he doesn't believe they are.
He took to his Google+ profile to clarify the situation. He explained that governments exerting more power are a big concern, countries like China, Russia or Iran being prime examples. This is the biggest threat, he believes.
Next is the threat of governments doing the bidding of media companies that are pushing for stricter copyright measures and laws, like SOPA and PIPA.
Facebook and Apple moving away from the open web is certainly not on par with those threats. However, he did say that the web today is much different from the one when he started Google.
He believes that great companies like Google, Amazon, eBay and so on would not be possible today when any startup has to play nice with the big companies to be allowed to offer its product to users.