Google's Brin: Free Internet in Serious Danger

Internet freedom is under attack, says Google's co-founder. "It's scary," Sergey Brin tells the Guardian, saying he's "more worried" than ever about "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world." Once, Brin doubted the Internet could be controlled. "I thought there was no way" for countries like China "to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he says.

Brin cites three major threats: Governments' attempts to control people's Internet access, Hollywood's piracy-battling efforts, and even tech companies such as Facebook and Apple, which exert powerful control over content. "For example, all the information in apps ... you can't search it," Brin notes. "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive." Had such rules been in place a few years back, they would have prevented the invention of Google's search engine, he says. Click for the full interview with Brin, or for Ai Weiwei's take on how China will never triumph over the Internet. (More Sergey Brin stories.)