No one has ever accused Sergey Brin of having tiny man-parts. The man runs the biggest ad agency in the world; at the very least, he’s got Don Draper-sized cojones.
Still, it takes enormous balls to say it’s Facebook and Apple that are, like, totally destroying the Internet.
In an interview with the Guardian, Google co-founder Sergey Brin warned that the “open” Internet is in danger from very powerful forces, including Facebook and Apple.
“I am more worried than I have been in the past … it’s scary,” he said
Brin identified the serious threats to the open Internet as repressive governments trying to control access to the Internet, entertainment industry crackdowns on piracy and so-called “wall gardens” that maintain more strict control over what can be done on their technology platforms, citing Facebook and Apple.
He said that Facebook and Apple are stifling innovation and risk Balkanizing the Web, and went as far as to say that Google would never have come into existence if Facebook were dominant.
Whether or not the Internet is actually being destroyed by the fell Zuckerbeast and the Spawn of Jobs is an entirely separate discussion (short answer: sorta, but not really). Still, this is the guy who founded a company that managed to turn CAPTCHA into a privacy problem, that tracks you across the Internet, that triggered a major privacy bomb with Google Buzz, that basically is the absolute worst of the Open Internet sometimes, and you’ve got the testicular fortitude to go on record and say it’s someone else’s fault, specifically the two companies you would most like to go away right now?
Damn impressive, Sergey. Damn impressive.
(Image courtesy Danny Sullivan on Flickr)