The future of the Internet seems bleak, but Americans are too busy playing Angry Birds to notice.

Let me get this straight: Just because Twitter is essentially in various countries to abide by local laws, Google intends to do the same thing?

This, of course, refers to Blogger.com, a Google property. I assume it will carry over to , which is more analogous with Twitter.

This is the beginning of the end for the Internet, I can assure you.

Here's a clip for the Fox News report:

Google can now make content on its Blogger platform selectively available to users based on local laws, in a move similar to Twitter's new country-specific censoring ability which prompted a backlash from critics. Google quietly announced changes to its free-blogging platform, called Blogger, on Jan. 9, but the move did not gain widespread attention until it was pointed out by technology blog TechDows this week.

Under the changes, Google is now redirecting users to country-specific domains for its Blogger sites -- for example, users in Australia trying to reach a blogspot.com domain will be rerouted to a blogspot.com.au site -- which will allow certain content to be blocked in countries where censorship is required.

Ah, yes, the key is "censorship is required." It's only too apparent that this notion of national censorship on a country-by-country basis will eventually lead to a completely censored and dumbed-down Internet, which will only be useful for approved shopping, Twitter, and Facebook.

I need to harp on this because it will be slow and painful to watch the Internet slip from an open network of networks to a closed, government-controlled system. This will take the form of country-by-country censorship. Then it will move to national closed nets. The rationale will be that we do not need an out-of-control information exchange in which fake information can be used to stir up the public. It's not a good thing.

I've been saying this for a while, but the way this is going to play out is now clear.

First, it starts in countries like Australia and China, where content must be censored to protect the hopeless public from getting too alarmed by the crazy information found on the Web. Heaven forbid. So we do it.

Over time, these filters become easier to do by choking off the outside world and keeping the Internet domestic, with full access only granted to a few officials or those with special licenses.

The government, some academics, and the police would be able to access the international net. The dark net would form and it would bring us back to a pre-Google and pre-Alta Vista, even a pre-Yahoo, era.

Critics of this bleak outlook will say that this could never happen here in the U.S. despite the threats by the government to develop an Internet kill switch, which has probably been in place for a while. The kill switch idea tells us that bad ideas lurk.

The key to censoring the net and eventually developing a closed system in the U.S. is the FCC. The idea is to find various ways the FCC can get more and involved in regulating the net. I'm surprised it didn't jump in earlier, like back in 1990.

The arguments are obvious and clear. The FCC regulates the public airways. Broaden its function to regulate public communications channels or all forms of "broadcast" information and bingo! We have a winner. The Internet is pretty public, if you ask me. It "broadcasts."

The FCC would love to regulate the Web to make sure it's fair and serves the greater public good. This is largely what the digital divide was going to lead to. The new arguments about net neutrality, which is a fairly meaningless term, will probably do the job where digital divide concerns failed.

Who or what entity will ensure net neutrality? The FCC, of course. It makes a lot of sense. So what happens after that? Regulations, that's what.

In my paranoid scenario, it leads to Internet licenses for blogging, podcasting, and just about everything else, in fact. You'll need to be minimally registered with the government to use the net. Does anyone see this headed in any other direction? I don't.

More importantly, will anyone really care? I do not think that 99.9 percent of the American populace would give a crap. Americans seldom do deep searches and few do anything more than check , buy stuff at Amazon, and play . Photo sharing is a big use, too. You do not need to access a U.K. site to do that. As long as Amazon and a few more American sites work, everything will be fine.

So, can someone tell me why my vision of the future is flawed and why this won't happen? I can't imagine any other outcome. Let's see how angry people get in Australia over the situation. My prediction: grousing for a day or two, then nothing.