Lately some have been suggesting that the internet is at risk. Much if not all of the hoopla stems from a recent interview with Sergey Brin from Google (GOOG). Brin says the biggest threats come from government crackdowns, attempts to control piracy, and “the rise of ‘restrictive’ walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.”

If you look at the arguments, they essentially break down to “If Google can’t spy on your every behavior, then the internet will collapse.” This is because all information in applications that aren’t web-based can’t be crawled by web crawlers, and user behavior inside the application also cannot be monitored.

It sounds pretty ridiculous, when you think about it. People have been using applications for years on the desktop. Some of them are local to the desktop …