Could the internet ever become an ‘us vs them’ giant walled garden

David Weinberger links to a good post by Marc Andreessen giving an overview of Open Social, the new EBFB (Everyone But Facebook) API.

I have yet to read enough about OS to make a judgement, but David states:

"Thus, the walled garden approach will at least allow us to move among the walled gardens."

… which is definitely a good way of looking at OS  – especially as one of the commenters notes that the EBFB coalition is basicially made up of people who aren’t a threat to Google.

With Google’s dominence of the online space and driving force behind OS, could we ever conceive of a time when the internet is a number of walled gardens, such as Facebook, Open Social, LinkedIn etc…?

As we put more and more of our lives and personal data online will we come to a point where we want to have some security and know our presence only exists in a verifiable environment and shared with only a community we have authenticated ourselves?

Technorati tags: Open Social, Facebook, walled gardens, secure communities, Google, Everyone But Facebook