Google Bangs on the Openness Drum Again

[Commentary] Google co-founder Sergey Brin said that “very powerful forces” — including oppressive and territorial governments, the entertainment industry, and Facebook and Apple — “have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world.”

Conflating Internet censorship and Google’s biggest competitors is a bit lazy, and it makes Brin seem wistful and out of touch. Has he looked around his own company lately and seen things like Search Plus Your World and Google Play? “Open” probably isn’t the best word to describe them.

Brin can argue that the current environment wouldn’t have fostered the creation of Google, but we’ve come a long way on the Internet since the late ’90s. If the definition of “open” is “that which can be indexed and monetized by Google,” maybe we need a new word.