Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has warned that some governments want to gain control of the Internet in the same way they control television and other media, according to the thinq_

He said that the problem of governments deciding what we are allowed to see on the Internet is getting worse as the frequency of government censorship requests relating to Google searches and other products owned by the company like YouTube saw a sudden increase in the six months between July and December 2010, the last period for which results are available.

Although the UN has declared access to the Internet as a basic human right, with the same importance as food, clean water and shelter, more Governements are pulling the plug on the Web as their populations become more aware of the world around them

"The reason is that, as the technology becomes more pervasive and as the citizenry becomes completely wired and the content gets localised to the language of the country, it becomes an issue like television.

"If you look at television in most of these countries, television is highly regulated because the leaders, partial dictators, half dictators or whatever you want to call them understand the power of television imagery to keep their citizenry in some bucket," he said.