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The HTTP Archive tracks how the Web is built.

One way Page tries to keep his finger on Google’s pulse is his insistence on signing off on every new hire—so far he’s vetted well over 30,000. For every candidate, he is given a compressed version of the lengthy packet created by the company’s hiring council, generated by custom software that allows Page to quickly scan the salient data. He gets a set every week and usually returns them with his approvals—or in some cases bounces—in three or four days. “It helps me to know what’s really going on,” he says.

Page has little patience for the bureaucracy that most large companies require. In 2007, he noticed that having an assistant made it easier for his coworkers to schedule meetings with him. “Most people aren’t willing to ask me if they want to meet with me,” he says. “They’re happy to ask an assistant.” That was an undesirable situation, Page says, “because my favorite meeting is the absence of meetings.” So one day, Brin and Page abruptly got rid of their assistants.

The Wikileaks method punishes a nation -- or any human undertaking -- that falls short of absolute, total transparency, which is all human undertakings, but perversely rewards an absolute lack of transparency. Thus an iron-shut government doesn't have leaks to the site, but a mostly-open government does.

If the political world becomes a mirror of the Internet as we know it today, then the world will be restructured around opaque, digitally delineated power centers surrounded by a sea of chaotic, underachieving openness. Wikileaks is one prototype of a digital power center, but others include hedge funds and social networking sites.

This is the world we are headed to, it seems, since people are unable to resist becoming organized according to the digital architectures that connect us. The only way out is to change the architecture.

In 2010, our mailboxes suddenly started overflowing with complaints from users – complaints that they were doing perfectly reasonable Google searches, and ending up on scraper sites that mirrored Stack Overflow content with added advertisements. Even worse, in some cases, the original Stack Overflow question was nowhere to be found in the search results! That's particularly odd because our attribution terms require linking directly back to us, the canonical source for the question, without nofollow. Google, in indexing the scraped page, cannot avoid seeing that the scraped page links back to the canonical source. This culminated in, of all things, a special browser plug-in that redirects to Stack Overflow from the ripoff sites. How totally depressing. Joel and I thought this was impossible. And I felt like I had personally failed all of you.

In Rusbridger’s office, Assange’s position was rife with ironies. An unwavering advocate of full, unfettered disclosure of primary-source material, Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience. He had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange—that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission. Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released.

Why would a bestselling author, capable of garnering a six-figure advance on a book, forgo the money, the media, and the mojo associated with a big publishing house?

Because it would make my book twice as expensive for you, half as profitable for me, less purposefully written, and unavailable until about two years from now. In short, the traditional publishing system is nearly dead. And publishing a book under its rules can mean the death of ideas within it, as well. Until it utterly reworks its method, gets rid of a majority of its corporate dead weight, releases its publishing houses from the conglomerates that own them, and embraces direct selling models, the publishing industry will remain rather useless to readers and writers alike.

Zuckerberg faced no such barrier. For less than $1,000, he could get his idea onto the Internet. He needed no permission from the network provider. He needed no clearance from Harvard to offer it to Harvard students. Neither with Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford. Nor with every other community he invited in. Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform. And though there are crucial partners who are essential to bring the product to market, the cost of proving viability on this platform has dropped dramatically. You don’t even have to possess Zuckerberg’s technical genius to develop your own idea for the Internet today. Websites across the developing world deliver high quality coding to complement the very best ideas from anywhere. This is a platform that has made democratic innovation possible...

So what do digital rights activists want, if not "free information?"

They want open access to the data and media produced at public expense, because this makes better science, better knowledge, and better culture – and because they already paid for it with their tax and licence fees.

They want to be able to quote, cite and reference earlier works because this is fundamental to all critical discourse.

They want to be able to build on earlier creative works in order to create new, original works because this is the basis of all creativity, and every work they wish to make fragmentary or inspirational use of was, in turn, compiled from the works that went before it.
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Steve would never let you call him a Troll. He sees himself as a person who likes to argue. In a way, that is not surprising: a Troll worth of the name cannot endorse the label in front of his victims, while he is 'trolling' them. Most regular forum or newsgroup users know about Trolls, and if they spot one, they will shun it, moderate it or refrain from 'feeding' it. Anti-Troll policies are on the rise, which has made the hobby more difficult of late, but also more exciting. Yet Steve's friends, off-trolling, will readily admit to being Trolls. And all of them will recognize a fellow Troll in Steve; some will even say he's the greatest they know. But Steve is so professional that he will never allow himself to let down his facade of sincere interest for argumentation. He won't come out as a Troll.