Australia: A Government Watch Dog with Two Companies to Monitor
December 11, 2018
Australia has become the first country to pass a law requiring that encrypted messages have to be unlocked for law enforcement. That means WhatsApp and a gaggle of other secret messaging apps.
Now Australia has another interesting idea, reported by Business Daily in Africa. The Australian government wants a regulator to monitor Facebook and Google. According to the report I saw:
Australia’s competition watchdog on Monday [December 10, 2018] recommended tougher scrutiny and a new regulatory body to check the dominance of tech giants Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google in the country’s online advertising and news markets.
The source document cited a familiar refrain:
The two firms have already promised to do more to tackle the spread of fake news and, in submissions to the ACCC, said they provided users access to global news articles while providing advertisers a cheap way of reaching big audiences.
Australia is a member of Five Eyes, and the country may be setting a path which Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US may follow.
In short, the good old days of Wild West digital services may find the prairie managed in part by barbed wire fences, gates, and folks with badges and six shooters and maybe an automatic weapon too.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2018
Alphabet Google: The Wing Clipping Accelerates
December 9, 2018
It is not a great time to be a tech titan. Facebook and Google and their peers seem to be embroiled in daily dilemmas. These kings of the internet are taking it on the chin regarding privacy, fake news, and more. And, yet, we are still surprised when their names pop up in the news feed. Such was the case with a recent Vulture piece, “Google Accused of GDPR Privacy Violations By Seven Countries.”
According to the article:
“The complaints, which each group has issued to their national data protection authorities in keeping with GDPR rules, come in the wake of the discovery that Google is able to track user’s location even when the “Location History” option is turned off. A second setting, “Web and App Activity,” which is enabled by default, must be turned off to fully prevent GPS tracking.”
As detailed in the New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of “Deflect, Deny, Delay” has been keeping them out of any serious legal hot water. Google’s challenge may rip headlines from the Zuckerberg connection machine.
The reason? Information is now becoming available about Google’s malicious ad network flaws. Since Google found inspiration in GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo’s pay to play system, Google is now talking about ad abuse; for example, “Tackling Ads Abuse in Apps and SDKs.”
What worse? Siphoning data or failing to identify issues which undermine the Madison Avenue way?
Ad fraud? Facebook and Google alike but different except to regulators in Europe.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2018
Patrick Roland, November 30, 2018
Google Explains: Yes, We Ignore Do Not Track
December 8, 2018
I love explanations which raise more questions than they answer. Facebook is good at this approach to governance, editorial policy, and decision making fantasy prose. But Google is Googley.
I read “Turn Do Not Track On or Off.” Here’s the passage I noted:
Most websites and web services, including Google’s, don’t change their behavior when they receive a Do Not Track request. Chrome doesn’t provide details of which websites and web services respect Do Not Track requests and how websites interpret them.
With Microsoft throwing in the towel on Edge, I think that most people using a browser are going to be tracked. In short, Chromium based browsers are not playing a gatekeeper role for their users.
I may be wrong, but I did not find the article helpful.
I do think that Google is thinking about Google. I assume that is why Marine General Joseph Dunbar wanted to know why Google will work with China but not with the US military.
Yes, we do not work with some requests. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, December 8, 2018
Google: Innovation Desperation or Innovation Innovation
December 5, 2018
Google has an innovation problem. The company has tried 20 percent free time. Engineers were supposed to work on personal projects. Google tried creating investment units. Google has acquired companies, often in time frames that seemed compressed. Anyone remember buying Motorola Mobility in 2011? Google created a super secret innovation center because the ageing Google Labs was not up to the task of creating Loon balloons and solving death. There have been competitions to identity bright young sprouts who can bring new ideas to the Google. If I dig through my files, there are probably innovation initiatives I have forgotten. Google is either a forward looking outfit, or it is struggling to do more than keep the 20 year old system looking young.
Has Google tried thinking in the hot tub like Archimedes? Google has bean bags, volleyball courts, and Foosball. But real innovations like those AltaVista mechanisms or GoTo’s pay to play for search visibility? There is Web Accelerator, of course.
I read “An Exclusive look inside Google’s in-house incubator Area 120.” The write up reports that a wizard Googler allegedly said and may actually believe:
“We built a place and a process to be able to have those folks come to us and then select what we thought were the most promising teams, the most promising ideas, the most promising markets,” explains managing director Alex Gawley, who has spent a decade at Google and left his role as product manager for Google Apps (since renamed G Suite) to spearhead this new effort. Employees “can actually leave their jobs and come to us to spend 100% of their time pursuing something that they are particularly passionate about,” he says.
Okay, Area 120. That even more mysterious than the famous Area 51. I am thinking of the theme from “Outer Limits.”
The Googlers “pitch” ideas in the hope of getting funding. A Japanese management expert explained a somewhat similar approach to keeping smart employees innovating. See Kuniyasu Sakai’s explanations of the method in “To Expand We Divide.” You probably have this and his other management writings on your desk, right? Someone at Google seems to have brushed against these concepts. In Fast Company / Google speak, these new companies are “hatchlings.”
Several observations:
- Innovation is a problem as companies become larger. Google illustrates this problem.
- Google’s approach to innovation is bifurcated. Most of its “innovations” originated elsewhere; for example, IBM Clever, AltaVista technology, GoTo-Overture “pay to play” advertising. The company’s goal is to innovate using original ideas, not refinements of other innovators’ breakthroughs.
- Google faces an innovation free environment. A recent example may be found in the wild and crazy Amazon announcements at its Re:Invent conference. Somewhere in the jet blast of announcements, there were a couple of substantive innovations. Google does phones with problems and wraps search in layers of cotton wool. Amazon, its seems, is sucking search innovation from Google.
For these reasons Google is gasping. Even rah rah write ups about Google like the recent encomium to Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat (both AltaVista veterans) is a technical “You Can’t Go Home Again” description of the good old days.
On one hand, Google’s efforts to become innovative are admirable. Persistence, patience, investment—yada yada. On the other hand, Google remains trapped as a servant to its Yahoo (GoTo and Overture) business model for online advertising.
The PR will continue to flow, but innovations? Maybe.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2018
Google and AltaVista
December 5, 2018
I read “The Friendship That Made Google Huge.” Interesting. I would like to ask,
Why isn’t AltaVista’s contribution to Google search put front and center?
And
Were other AltaVista’s veterans hired by the Google to jump start the engineering of the system?
Google was “clever”, and the company surfed on the missteps of Hewlett Packard. Google also borrowed some inspiration from GoTo-Overture-Yahoo. In short, Google’s story is more nuanced than some retellings of history suggest.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2018
Google Privacy Stumbles Over a New Hurdle
November 28, 2018
Out of the frying pan and into the fire for the world’s biggest search engine. The more Google tries to grow, the more it seems to stub its toe on privacy issues. We were treated to the latest episode of this soap opera recently when we read a Next Web story, “Google’s Ethical Black Hole Swallows Deepmind’s Best Intentions.”
In short, healthcare startup, Deepmind, was sold to Google. Despite Deepmind’s promise that client info would not be sold, experts are not convinced that they can trust Google yet.
“There’s good reason for privacy advocates to be concerned, but perhaps the news would be received differently if Google hadn’t spent all year destroying the consumer trust it’s cultivated over the past decade…DeepMind, for its part, says the private data won’t end up connected to Google accounts.”
Additional criticism of Google appears in Fortune Magazine’s “Google Is Accused of ‘Tricking’ Users Into Sharing Location Data Under the EU’s Strict New Privacy Laws.” The magazine reports that a document prepared by the Norwegian Consumer Council explains some of Google’s more interesting methods of obtaining information about a user’s behavior. The tracking vector makes use of Android, Google Maps, and some technical ornaments.
If you want to read the full report, navigate to this link. Fortune included many ads in its short write up, but managed to leave out the link to the source document.
Ah, modern “real” journalists. Ah, Google, always eager to give users control and ways to improve one’s experience.
Patrick Roland, November 23, 2018
High School Science Club Officers Face Member Revolt
November 28, 2018
I don’t want to make a big deal of this high school science club management crisis. In a nutshell, people invited into the Google are members of a type of institution I call “the high school management club.” Now the members are revolting (no pun intended). According to “Employees Call on Google to Cancel China Project,” the members are not happy with the club’s management. What will the science club management do? My idea is that the Facebook “deflect, deny, and keep on going” approach might be up for consideration. Remarkable.
Stephen E Arnold, November 28, 2018
Grousing about the Google: Grouse, Grouse
November 23, 2018
Some people cannot accept the reality of Alphabet Google. If you had the pleasure of Psychology 101, you know about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. (A refresher is here.) Google is an entity focused on “self actualization.” For a company run by wizards that translates to doing what generates maximum benefits for the Alphabeteers and Googlers. Example? Money, power, freedom to do whatever seems cool to former high school science club members.
Foundem, a company which found itself on the outside of Google search results, has been a thorn in the online ad giant’s muscular thigh for years.(For some background, click this link.) Foundem is involve in searchneutrality.org, a Web site which makes available information about certain actions of Alphabet Google which allegedly are not fair.
As a reminder, acting in one’s self interest is probably at odds with some thinkers’ definitions of “fair.” The concept of search neutrality is of little interest to some people in the information retrieval game. Example: people engaged in search engine optimization, a Google ad sales professionals clawing for a bonus, and marketers who explain that the Pixel 3 is “new” and “improved” despite some Pixel owners’ complaints.
Seachneutrality.org made public a letter sent to the EU’s top enforcement official, Margrethe Vestager. The contents of the letter are easy to summarize:
Google is discriminating against companies with which it competes.
The notion of search neutrality is quaint. You can look at the Wikipedia explanation of the concept, which is different from my understanding of the bound phrase. Objectivity, precision, recall, and freedom from bias are outmoded concepts when it comes to ad supported Web search.
Google wants clicks and sales. Maslow’s hierarchy suggests that the iPhone is going to come up short in queries for mobile devices. Remember the Pixel? In companies with logical employees, taking steps to make sure that their employer comes out number one makes sense. That’s why Alphabet Google logic is difficult for some to accept. Example: Foundem, the EU, and Ms. Vestager.
The notion of objectivity in search results bit the dust when “pay to play” replaced the hopelessly ineffective editorial controls in place at commercial database publishers in the 1980s. The elimination of precision and recall in favor of hit boosting made more sense. Goodness. I rolled right over when VP Cheney wanted his Web site to appear when queries for the White House were sent to the US government’s search system in the 2000s.
There are some hold outs for objectivity. Example: The Lexis search system. But even in that commercial service some content does not appear for various reasons. Therefore, the results are incomplete or incorrect because errors in stories are not inserted into the online content. I suppose, if I were not understanding, I would suggest that commercial online information is both incomplete and inaccurate. Business Dateline, a product on which I worked decades ago, included corrections, but we selected the stories to go into the database. That meant that Business Dateline was accurate and incomplete.
You can see where I am headed.
Online is not and never will be free from distortions. These can be algorithmic because Boolean is irrelevant to many today. These can be editorial like the construction of the online indexes and full text files themselves. These can be willful like Amazon’s slamming in its house brands and crazy suggestions for products which will be shipped for an eye popping fee.
Now open letters are cathartic. The letter may result in another fine against a US based company focused on money, power, etc. But let’s be clear. Facebook does not want to pay a fine for its Cambridge Analytica adventure. Apple may reluctantly cough up some taxes in Ireland. Google might write a check and move on.
But the impact is negligible.
The reason is the beaver analogy. What happens if I take six beavers and put them in the little used restaurant at the top of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan? The beavers immediately begin to build a dam. Beavers do what beavers do.
Net net: American technology giants do what American technology giants do. These outfits will make decisions that sever their need for self actualization. In my lingo, self actualization is the money power thing.
What organization has the muscle to put Alphabet Google in a box and keep it there?
In my view, it will not be a government official. Whom do you nominate as the keeper of Googzilla? When you have “foundem”, let me know.
Stephen E Arnold, November 23, 2018
Dongles, Security, and Keys: A New but Familiar Tune
November 22, 2018
Part of Google’s new product lineup is the Titan Security Key, selling for only $50. The Hacker News shares more information on the Titan Security Key in the article, “Google ‘Titan Security Key’ Is Now On Sale For $50.” Google first announced the security key at the Google Cloud Next 2018 convention.
The Titan Security Key is similar to Yubico’s YubiKey. It offers hardware-based two factor authentication for online accounts with the highest level of protection from phishing. The full kit offers a USB security key, Bluetooth security key, USB-C to USB-A adapter, and USB-C to USB-A connecting cable. The Titan Security Key is based on the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, U2F protocol and uses Google developed secure element and firmware. It adds another security level on top of passwords, an idea similar to the Tor browser. It is compliant with many popular browsers, email services, social media, and cloud services.
As more aspects of people’s lives migrate online, security is more important than ever. Tools like the Titan Security Key provide an extra level of security at a nominal price:
“According to Google, the FIDO-compatible hardware-based security keys are thought to be more safe and efficient at preventing phishing, man-in-the-middle (MITM) and other types of account-takeover attacks than other 2FA methods requiring SMS, for example. This is because even if an attacker manages to compromise your online account credentials, log into your account is impossible without the physical key. Last month, Google said it started requiring its 85,000 employees to use Titan Security Keys internally for months last year, and the company said since then none of them had fallen victim to any phishing attack.”
The Google Titan Security Key appears to be a simple and cheap way to ensure more security for individuals. One of the problems people face with online security is the lack of understanding, cost, and finding an effective product. Google appears to have created a great solution, but the one problem is that China made the Titan Security Key. China has all the schematics for the device and China is a hotbed for phishing attacks.
Microsoft, another me too outfit, has jumped on the bandwagon for dongles. Microsoft now offers native FIDO key login for Windows 10. What about losing a dongle?
Back to square one?
Whitney Grace, November 22, 2018
Baidu May Force Google to Do Search the Chinese Way
November 22, 2018
China has famously strict internet policies. The world’s largest population also is known to have the world’s largest firewall, preventing net freedom. However, that doesn’t mean search there is stuck in the stone age. In fact, it’s quite profitable, as we discovered in a recent Quertime story, “The 20 Most Popular Search Engines in China.”
According to the story:
“The search engine market in China has maintained an overall stable growth. As a matter of fact, during the last quarter of 2012, various search engines have earned about $8 billion RMB. By the third quarter of 2014, it reached more than $15 billion RMB, which presented more than 50% increase in just a period of two years.”
Tops on their list was not Google, but Baidu. While you might have vaguely heard of it, it’s a name you should pay attention to. Baidu is mentioned in concert with other Chinese tech giants, like Alibaba. Recently, it was chosen as a strong stock to purchase alongside the Chinese Amazon, which should tell you quite a lot. There is undoubtedly a tech boom happening in Asia now and it’s the smart investor who can find a way to tap into a little of that magic while it is hot.
Patrick Roland, November 22, 2018
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