Brin added that regardless of how you feel about digital ecosystems or about Google, “please do not take the free and open Internet for granted from government intervention.”

Brin said that Facebook and Apple having their own proprietary platforms and access to their users risks stifling innovation and balkanizing the web. “There’s a lot to be lost,” he said. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it.”

Brin said that him and Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the Internet was dominated by Facebook back then. You would have to play by their rules, which was really restrictive. Even though Facebook has been “sucking down Gmail contacts for many years,” the social network has not made it easy for users to switch their data to other services.

After bashing on Facebook and Apple a bit, Brin decided to focus on the entertainment industry. He said that the industry was “shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot” because they were lobbying for legislation to block websites offering pirated material. PIPA and SOPA would have led to the U.S. using the same technology China and Iran has been criticized for using.

The glasses would also have a unique navigation system that can be controlled with head tilting for scrolling and clicking. The glasses will also have a low-resolution built-in camera to overlay information about locations and surrounding buildings. However the glasses were not designed to be worn constantly.

The Google X team is currently discussing what types of privacy implications of the glasses to consider. For example, Google would want people to know if they were being recorded through the glasses. The glasses are being built at the Google X offices, which is a secret lab run by Sergey Brin. Steve Lee, the engineer that built Google Latitude, is highly involved in the project.

Prakash had worked at Apple for over 8 years and was most recently at the product integrity position. He was responsible for product quality across all Apple products from iPhones to Macs. Currently Apple has the best reputation for product quality according to J.D. Power.

When Prakash started at Apple 8 years ago, he was a senior reliability manager. Before Apple, he worked as the director of engineering design validation at Cielo Communications. He had also worked as a reliability and FA manager at 3Com.

An Open Letter to Washington
We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.
However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act–which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online–will undermine that framework.
These two pieces of legislation threaten to:
* Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;
* Deny website owners the right to due process of law;
* Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and
* Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.
We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

If NASA agrees, then NASA would replace the outer panels of Hangar One. The outer panels have been removed since it was discovered that they contained lead paint and asbestos. NASA would remain the owner of the building and they would have the right to rent out areas of Hangar One that was not being used. Google would be able to use two-thirds of Hangar One’s floor space to park their 8 jets.

Hangar One was built in the 1930′s. Hangar One covers 8 acres and the height of the building is 198 feet. The Hangar was intended to house military airships. The building is so tall that fog is known to form in the upper levels of the facility.

[Mercury News]

“If everyone reading this donated $5, our fundraiser would be over today,” stated Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. “Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 679 servers and 95 staff. Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 450 million different people every month – with billions of page views. Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia.”

[Ars Technica]

The Google Lab is supposedly headed by Sebastian Thrun, who is best known for developing the world’s first driverless car. Andrew Ng, an A.I. expert and Stanford professor is also believed to be working at the Google lab.

Some of the ideas created at Google X may not see the light of day, but others may go on to lead a revolution such as the driverless cars idea.

[New York Times]