Sergey Brin's Clarification On Guardian article

Sergey Brin's Clarification On Guardian article
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How long would it take until they abused their power?

If someone is dominating the web it's Google and looking at their power and how much traffic they move—their actions feel balanced and neutral compared to any other player.

The more they consolidate their power, the less they seem constrained by this. I don't see anything that fundamentally distinguishes google from these other companies other than their present strategic position.

You can be successful with your product on the WWW without employing any Google services, being totally independent. If people and other sites like you and link back to you your traffic will quickly skyrocket—which feels natural. You are not obliged to use any Google service like GA. Just use the Internet and its open standards and you are ready to go because Google left the Internet's core like it is and didn't build a walled garden around it. That's the great thing about the web: it's decentralized and everybody can contribute, Google haven't tried to change this. That's why I don't like the native app trend with the appstore, all the innovation the Internet brought us are vanished by one central and strict entity and nobody cares, Android at least tries to emulate some parts of the net (i.e. by using intents, allowing multiple appstores, with the open nature of Android, etc.), Google is regarding their marketplace Play much more relaxed than Apple.

Looking at the Appstore or the Facebook API, there are so many rules which don't follow any of the core principles of the Internet. You have to play by these rules otherwise you are banned or completely and utterly dependent of one single entities. Moreover, if you then play by Apple's or Facebook's rules you still do not get the impact as from Google traffic-wise.

Ultimately, Google haven't entered the Chinese Market which shows the company's values. Every larger western corporation have build joint venture based branches in China—every corporation, except Google—and that's distinguishes Google.

The article brought to my mind a presentation Roger McNamee (Elevation Partners) has been circulating -"10 Hypothesis for Technology Investing."

A number of the points in the presentation illustrate a challenging future for Google:

- Index Search has peaked: Google's position of dominance on the web is fading, due largely in part to their own success.

- Apple's App Model Threatens the World Wide Web: a walled garden, un-indexable

- Rise of Social. Facebook owns. Again, a walled garden, un-indexable

- Lack of searches on mobile

Similar arguments were made in Wired's "The Web is Dead" feature, and they all point towards Google's core business going downhill.

The Guardian article made Sergey seem... well... butthurt. As if recognizing his lousy position, but instead of owning it, whining about it. I've always thought of Sergey as smarter than that. He's always seemed much more pragmatic than The Guardian article made him out to be. It didn't feel like the Sergey I [don't actually] know.

Certainly Sergey has gripes with Apple and Facebook, and certainly he has self-preserving motivations for responding as he did. But I feel like giving him more of the benefit of the doubt here and calling slight nanz on The Guardian for rabble-rousing as press outlets do.

Also - kudos to Sergey for his extremely diplomatic clarification there. We've all seen much less tactful responses to press spins.

10 Hypothesis Slides: http://read.bi/GMHoYQ

10 Hypothesis Video: http://bit.ly/w0qpeh