When it was invented, the internet was meant to be decentralized. Nothing should have direct control of it, and nobody should see different versions of the web others are seeing.
But the thing is, the internet has been commercialized.
And at the top of the food chain, is tech companies with seemingly unlimited resources. Through their influence and power over the internet's infrastructure and even its backbone, they can directly control the flow of information.
While they may not do this in the most obvious of ways, what is certain is that, a number of tech companies can be so huge and powerful that they can make almost everything else on the web to gravitate around it.
And among those giants, include Google, the largest search engine the internet has ever seen.
With Google Search at the center of many people's activities on the web, things don't look good.
And that is at least according to the world's most famous whistleblower.
Edward Snowden is the man who became famous after leaking a series of NSA data to journalists.
As the computer intelligence consultant has turned fugitive, Snowden has then turned into a technology critic as well.
In a tweet, in what appeared to be a marketing effort, Snowden said that "search results become absolute garbage," and that "it's nearly impossible to discover useful information these days."
When Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land and RustyBrick quote-tweeted Snowden and called on search engine expert and Google employee Danny Sullivan to opine on the matter, Sullivan's initial thought was that Snowden was "talking about site search" in general, and "not Google."
And this was where he got it all wrong.
Snowden responded by saying that "Google is the worst by far."
Is it just me, or have search results become absolute garbage for basically every site? It's nearly impossible to discover useful information these days (outside the ArchWiki).
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 16, 2021
I got the impression he’s talking about site search. That’s what he named, not Google.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 16, 2021
No, I definitely mean search engines (among others), and Google is the worst by far, even w/o poor results:
*inaccessible to anyone who cares about their privacy (improper Tor blocking)
*hostile, scripts-required captchas
*page redirect for mandatory, scripts-required cookie— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 16, 2021
I seriously encourage anyone who has anything to do with google search to try to *any* google stuff in a privacy preserving manner:
A) All scripts disabled, hardened browser.
B) Via Tor (and after, via highly-shared VPNs).
C) Not logged in.
D) Definitely not using Chrome.— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 16, 2021
Snowden then ended his Twitter thread on his thought about Google, by saying "the fact that Google is totally unusable is no skin off my back." And that is "because I can work around it."
His reason is because Google in redirecting users to a script-required cookie-gate is making the internet less safe.
"No law or bot problem justifies this," he said.
As a computer expert and a former CIA administrator, Snowden is no stranger to the ways of preserving privacy in the modern days of the internet, where information is controlled by only a few.
In fact, he is a strong supporter of encryption, and urged people anywhere to use it whenever they are online.
While the U.S. government said Snowden violated the law by leaking government secrets in an act of treason, Snowden argued that he had a moral obligation to act.
Snowden gave a justification for his "whistle blowing" by stating that it was his duty "to inform the public as to that which is done in there name and that which is done against them."
And in this case, Google isn't a government-owned entity, but it is a commercial entity that works and makes money by not preserving people's privacy.