Google co-founder Sergey Brin cites Apple's App Store as a threat to online freedom

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has revealed in an interview with The Guardian that he believes "very powerful forces" are trying to restrict freedom on the internet.

"I am more worried than I have been in the past," he said. "I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas that the genie has been put back in the bottle."

Governments in countries like China and Saudi Arabia have already managed to successfully restrict internet use in ways Brin didn't think was possible, but the Google co-founder is also worried about popular "walled garden" platforms - namely, Facebook and Apple's App Store.

"There's a lot to be lost. For example, all the information in apps - that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it," he said.

"The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation."