It’s a fact, winner takes all. The top three megasites on the internet (Yahoo, Google, and MSN) each get seen by about 30% of all web vistors. Between the three of them, they control what the vast majority of internet users see, their browsing information, and their email accounts.And that is a recipe for trouble.

Each of these companies are building and run massive datacenters. They’re investing millions (billions…?) in the future of a centralized internet. Each wants to provide your email service, your scheduling service, your office experience, and basically every service possible over the internet. In order for this to be possible, they’re buying up and creating supercomputers capable of storing every document you’ll ever create, every email you ever write, and every video or picture you post to the net. Do you see a problem?

The biggest problem is the one most people refuse to look at. With government’s history of illegal wiretaps, illegal internet backbone snooping, and just all around disregard for the law, a datacenter containing millions of people’s every document ever written or photo ever taken is just too good for them to pass up. And they don’t even have to go through the process of signing a law to force everyone’s every word written into a mega database. All they need is a homeland security wiretap from a judge on Google’s datacenter, and wham!, they’re snooping legally on millions of users. Scary.

Or, just as dangerously, a government entity decides a certain segment of information (democracy, for instance) is dangerous to its citizens. It blocks the big sites from presenting any news unapproved by the government and creates a firewall to stop any other potentially threatening sites. This is already happening. (China)

In the coming years, there’s going to be a huge need for decentralization of information on the internet if freedom of thought is going to persist. The internet was built on Open Source and freedom of information via peer to peer software. If it’s to remain a beacon for freedom of speech and expression, we’ve got to start supporting smaller search engines, and build a more distributed internet. The concentration of information can only lead to abuse.

There are solutions out there, like the Freenet, but what do you think is the best way to combat the centralization of information on the internet?

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Computer Security, Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.