Google’s new business tactics are creatively inelegant, and insupportable to geeks: many of the things friendly to the open internet that Google could have done, and was in the process of doing, have been abandoned for ever. Facebook, Amazon and to a lesser extent Twitter have changed in the same direction, appropriating whatever they can – apps, music, movies, books – to turn themselves into the only internet you’ll ever need. One day they’ll all be competing and incompatible ecosystems: you’ll have to choose which of the world wide webs to be in, pretty much exclusively, even though they will all be essentially indistinguishable.
World Wide Webs. Sounds alarmist, but I’m a bit worried that this could happen.