Germany: Taps the Silicon Valley PEZ Dispenser
February 4, 2022
I spotted a German legal report which appeared a few days ago. You can find the German language document at this link. The thrust of the reported legal decision is that the use of Google Fonts violates the German view of a GDPR General Data Protection Regulation. The ruling means that Google’s tracking the IP address of a Google Font user violates user privacy. Google, according to the report, does not give the font user a way to turn off the tracking. The IP address of the defendant was transmitted to a Google server in the US. So what? Hitting the PEZ dispenser for a small amount of money is no big deal. Getting a long line of those hungry for PEZ output can be an issue, and the craze could spread to other EU countries PEZ fans. Worth watching even if one does not want a Google output of a few hundred dollars.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2022
Google and Tracking Magic
February 4, 2022
Tracking user locations is baked in to Google’s apps, and that is unlikely to change as long as tracking data (“anonymized,” we are repeatedly assured) remains a valuable source of revenue. CNet considers, “Can You Really Stop Google from Tracking You? Here’s What We Know.” The short answer—you can try. Reporter Kelsey Fogarty writes:
“If you use Google’s apps on your iPhone or Android phone, it’s a good possibility you’re being tracked. And turning off your location history in your Google account doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Disabling that setting may seem like a one-and-done solution, but some Google apps are still storing your location data. Simply opening the Google Maps app or using Google search on any platform logs your approximate location with a time stamp. In the latest lawsuits against the giant search engine company, Google has been sued by several states due to its use of location data. They allege Google makes it ‘nearly impossible’ for people to prevent their location from being tracked. After a 2018 investigation by the Associated Press, Google added features to make it easier to control what location and other data is saved, and what is deleted with features like Your Data in Maps and Search, which give you quick access to your location controls. However, DC Attorney General Karl Racine said, ‘Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access.’ Google has since defended itself.”
Of course it has. The company points to several measures one can take to “turn off” tracking, insisting control is in the hands of users. However, the write-up hints, there is no guarantee they will actually work. See the article for these methods—they may at least improve one’s odds. Or not. Google does promise one thing: users who turn off tracking will receive a less personalized experience, meaning less relevant ads and less helpful local search. Who needs privacy when one must have the name and number of the closest tapas joint.
Cynthia Murrell, February 4, 2022
Google: Ethical Ethics and Managing Management
February 3, 2022
I read “Two More AI Ethics Researchers Follow Timnit Gebru Out of Google.” The write up includes this statement:
“In a word, tech has a whiteness problem. Google is not just a tech organization. Google is a white tech organization,” Hanna writes. “More specifically, tech organizations are committed to defending whiteness through the ‘interrelated practices, processes, actions and meanings,’ the techniques of reproducing the organization. In this case, that means defending their policies of recruitment, hierarchization, and monetization.”
I also noted this passage:
Hanna and Baker told Bloomberg they also believe Google has become less willing to listen to employees in recent years. They specifically pointed to the company’s pursuit of potential contracts from the Pentagon over the past and the very public objections of its workers.
Google reported record financial results. The company faces headwinds outside of hefty ad revenue generation. The question is, “Will the firm continue to thrive despite its apparent approach to handling certain topics (ethical artificial intelligence), staff composition (diverse), and political (alleged monopolistic behavior)?
My hunch is that just as Facebook’s customer acquisition has slowed, Google faces similar erosion; for example, technical debt costs, increased customer acquisition cost, and what I call “trust” cost. Will the numbers offset the intangibles of managing and messaging?
Will Dr. Gebru’s new venture identify the risks of Google’s approach to content management and shaping? Worth watching the antics of the Google in crowd it is.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2022
Russia Taps the Google PEZ Dispenser for Petty Cash
February 2, 2022
Tass, the Russian News Agency, published “Google Fined over $50,000 for Links to Radicals, Drug Trafficking.” The write up disseminates this information:
magistrate court in Moscow fined the Google search engine 4 mln rubles ($51,408) for providing links to the websites with content banned in Russia including the promotion of drugs, radical Islam, nationalism, as well as the kasparov.ru website, banned in the country.
The emission continued:
Google has not stopped issuing links to websites with child pornography, information about drug trafficking, nationalist organizations in Russia and Ukraine, and the activities of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir group outlawed in Russia, the document says.
My hunch is that the practice suggests that Moscow does sees plenty of PEZ in the mechanism with the Googley decoration.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2022
Google Docs: Exploit or Exploited?
February 2, 2022
Real-time collaboration has been a boon for teams working remotely over the last couple of years. For Google Docs, however, the feature has opened the door to a hazardous vulnerability. Security Boulevard reports on a “‘Massive Wave’ of Hackers Exploiting Comments in Google Docs.” Writer Teri Robinson tells us:
“It seems like users are now paying the price for Google not fully closing or mitigating a vulnerability in the comment feature of Google Docs—since December a ‘massive wave’ of hackers have exploited the flaw through impersonation and phishing to send malicious content to those using email—primarily Outlook—and Google Docs, according to researchers at Avanan. The targets? Just about any end user. Taking advantage of the ‘seamless nature’ of Google Docs that lets employees collaborate in real-time around the globe, the hackers simply add a comment to a Google Doc that mentions the target with an @. ‘By doing so, an email is automatically sent to that person’s inbox. In that email, which comes from Google, the full comment, including the bad links and text, is included,’ Avanan researchers wrote in a blog post. ‘Further, the email address isn’t shown, just the attackers’ name, making this ripe for impersonators.’ Avanan observed the hackers hitting more than ‘500 inboxes across 30 tenants … using over 100 different Gmail accounts.’”
The hackers’ efforts were helped by the fact their content was delivered directly by Google, which raises flags for neither most users nor their junk filters. That senders’ email addresses are hidden makes it that much harder to spot imposters. (Though, it should be noted, even if an address checks out it could be coming from a compromised account.) As many of our readers know, it just takes one worker falling for the trick to compromise an entire organization. Avanan researchers advise us not to reflexively trust messages just because they come through a trusted platform. Be sure to hover over links before clicking to confirm they will send you to an expected destination. And, as Robinson concludes:
“If users are unsure that a sender is on the up-and-up, they should contact the legitimate sender for confirmation that they sent a document, Avanan said.”
Yep, Google Docs, now mostly for fee thrills.
Cynthia Murrell, February 2, 2022
Google Management: A Midas Touch for Some. Others? Nah.
January 31, 2022
There is nothing like great management in action. This recent pair of moves from Google, however, is anything but. Insider reports, “Google Boosted Base Pay for 4 Top Execs to $1 Million and Handed Them up to $34 Million in Stock, Weeks After Employees Raised Concerns About Pay and Inflation.” In this time of rapidly rising prices, one might ask, shouldn’t the company grant cost-of-living increases to all? Don’t be silly—if the executives paid workers enough to keep up with the costs of food and fuel, they would not have as many millions to sprinkle across the C-suite. Writer Martin Coulter tells us:
“According to a summary of executive salaries disclosed in SEC filings, the four Google execs — chief financial officer Ruth Porat, senior VP Prabhakar Raghavan, chief business officer Philipp Schindler, and legal chief Kent Walker — will see their annual salaries bumped from $650,000. All are also eligible for a $2 million bonus if they help Google to meet its ‘social and environmental goals’ for 2022. … As well as their increased annual pay, the executives were granted millions of dollars’ worth of performance and restricted stock units, which variously vest at different times and depend on the execs sticking around.”
Those stock units total $23 million for two of the four executives and $34 million for the other two. These lavish terms follow yet another very profitable quarter for the company. During those three months it took in over $65 billion, nearly $20 billion of which was pure profit. It seems Google believes only the top brass is responsible for these gains—what would rank-and-file workers have to do with it?
Having their request for pay commiserate with inflation rebuffed is but the latest grievance for Google workers. In The Verge’s piece, “Google Will Pay Top Execs $1 Million Each After Declining to Boost Workers’ Pay,” writer Jay Peters points out:
“The raises were also given as Google is embroiled in a legal battle with employees over charges that they were illegally fired in 2019. The employees are planning to call one of the recipients of a new $1 million salary, Kent Walker, to testify as an adverse witness. Employees are also reportedly dissatisfied with the company’s seemingly different remote work policies for higher-ups. In July, senior vice president for technical infrastructure Urs Hölzle announced he was moving to New Zealand, which two employees told CNET was emblematic of a double standard for executives.”
Google’s management methods are remarkable and well matched to the company’s objectives. The employees’ objectives? Hmmm.
Cynthia Murrell, January 31, 2021
European Parliament Embraces the Regulatory PEZ Dispenser Model for Fines on Big Tech
January 24, 2022
I read about the Digital Services Act. “European Parliament Passes Huge Clampdown on Tracking Ads” states:
The European Parliament, the legislative body for the European Union (EU), has voted in favor of its Digital Services Act (DSA), which seeks to limit the power of American internet giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google.
That’s mostly on the money. What’s not spelled out is that the procedure of identifying a tracking instance, building a case, adjudicating, appealing, and levying a fine is now official. It’s a procedure. Perhaps a bright French artificial intelligence professional will use Facebook or Google AI components to make the entire process automatic, efficient, and – obviously – without bias. No discrimination! But the DSA is aimed at outfits like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Nope. Not discriminatory and also not yet a really official thing…yet.
I found this paragraph memorable:
According to the EU, the DSA covers several key areas, including introducing mechanisms by which companies have to remove “illegal” content in a timely manner in a bid to reduce misinformation, increasing requirements on so-called very large online platforms (VLOPs), regulating online ad targeting, and clamping down on dark patterns. The scope and scale of the DSA (and associated DMA) are huge, perhaps the biggest effort yet by a substantial world power (outside of China) to regulate what happens in cyberspace.
How does one redistribute “wealth”? Easy. Create a legal PEZ dispenser, push the plastic likeness of Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, or Mr. Pichai (who is the only one of the PEZ dispensers with AI in his name).
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2022
How Not to Get Hired by Alphabet, Google, YouTube, Et Al
January 21, 2022
I have a sneaking suspicion that the author / entity / bot responsible for “Unreddacted Antitrust Complain Shows Google’s Ad Business Even Scummier than Many Imagined.” For the record, I want to point out this definition of scum, courtesy of none other than Google:
a layer of dirt or froth on the surface of a liquid. “green scum found on stagnant pools” Colorful, particularly the dirt combined with the adjective green and stagnant
It follows that the context and connotation of the article views Google as a less than pristine outfit. I ask, “How can that be true?”
The write up states:
… the complaint paints a damning picture of how Google has monopolized all of the critical informational choke points in the online ad business between publishers and advertisers; as one employee put it, it’s as if Google owned a bank and the New York Stock Exchange, only more so. Google shamelessly engages in fraud…
These are words which an Alphabet, Google, YouTube, et al attorney might find sufficiently magnetic to pull the legal eagles to their nest to plot a legal maneuver to prevent the author / entity / bot responsible for the write up from having a day without a summons and a wearying visit to a courthouse for months, maybe years.
If you want to know how one of Silicon Valley’s finest does business, you will want to check out the cited article. Some of the comments are fascinating. I quite liked the one that suggested the matter would be a slam dunk for prosecutors. Ho ho ho.
Personally I find Alphabet / Google / YouTube et all the cat’s pajamas. However, I do not think the author / entity / bot creating the write up will get a chance to apply for a job at the online ad company and its affiliated firms.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2022
Google Identifies Smart Software Trends
January 18, 2022
Straight away the marketing document “Google Research: Themes from 2021 and Beyond” is more than 8,000 words. Anyone familiar with Google’s outputs may have observed that Google prefers short, mostly ambiguous phraseology. Here’s an example from Google support:
Your account is disabled
If you’re redirected to this page, your Google Account has been disabled.
When a Google document is long, it must be important. Furthermore, when that Google document is allegedly authored by Dr. Jeff Dean, a long time Googler, you know it is important. Another clue is the list of contributors which includes 32 contributors helpfully alphabetized by the individual’s first name. Hey, those traditional bibliographic conventions are not useful. Chicago Manual of Style? Balderdash it seems.
Okay, long. Lots of authors. What are the trends? Based on my humanoid processes, it appears that the major points are:
TREND 1: Machine learning is cranking out “more capable, general purpose machine learning models.” The idea, it seems, that the days of hand-crafting a collection of numerical recipes, assembling and testing training data, training the model, fixing issues in the model, and then applying the model are either history or going to be history soon. Why’s this important? Cheaper, faster, and allegedly better machine learning deployment. What happens if the model is off a bit or drifts, no worries. Machine learning methods which make use of a handful of human overseers will fix up the issues quickly, maybe in real time.,
TREND 2: There is more efficiency improvements in the works. The idea is the more efficiency is better, faster, and logical. One can look at the achievements of smart software in autonomous automobiles to see the evidence of these efficiencies. Sure, there are minor issues because smart software is sometimes outputting a zero when a one is needed. What’s a highway fatality in the total number of safe miles driven? Efficiency also means it is smarter to obtain machine learning, ready to roll models and data sets from large efficient, high technology outfits. One source could be Google. No kidding? Google?
TREND 3: “Machine learning is becoming more personally and communally beneficial.” Yep, machine learning helps the community. Now is the “community” the individual who works on deep dives into Google’s approach to machine learning or a method that sails in a different direction. Is the community the advertisers who rely on Google to match in an intelligent and efficient manner the sales’ messages to users human and system communities? Is the communally beneficial group the users of Google’s ad supported services? The main point is that Google and machine learning are doing good and will do better going forward. This is a theme Google management expresses each time it has an opportunity to address a concern in a hearing about the company’s activities in a hearing in Washington, DC.
TREND 4: Machine learning is going to have “growing impact” on science, health, and sustainability. This is a very big trend. It implicitly asserts that smart software will improve “science.” In the midst of the Covid issue, humans appear to have stumbled. The trend is that humans won’t make such mistakes going forward; for example, Theranos-type exaggeration, CDC contradictory information, or Google and the allegations of collusion with Facebook. Smart software will make these examples shrink in number. That sounds good, very good.
TREND 5: A notable trend is that there will be a “deeper and broader understanding of machine learning.” Okay, who is going to understand? Google-certified machine learning professionals, advertising intermediaries, search engine optimization experts, consumers of free Google Web search, Google itself, or some other cohort? Will the use of off the shelf, pre packaged machine learning data sets and models make it more difficult to figure out what is behind the walls of a black box? Anyway, this trend sounds a suitable do good, technology will improve the world that appears to promise a bright, sunny day even though a weathered fisherperson says, “A storm is a-coming.”
The write up includes art, charts, graphs, and pictures. These are indeed Googley. Some are animated. Links to YouTube videos enliven the essay.
The content is interesting, but I noted several omissions:
- No reference to making making decisions which do not allegedly contravene one or more regulations or just look like really dicey decisions. Example: “Executives Personally Signed Off on Facebook-Google Ad Collusion Plot, States Claim”
- No reference to the use of machine learning to avoid what appear to be ill-conceived and possibly dumb personnel decisions within the Google smart software group. Example: “Google Fired a Leading AI Scientist but Now She’s Founded Her Own Firm”
- No reference to anti trust issues. Example: “India Hits Google with Antitrust Investigation over Alleged Abuse in News Aggregation.”
Marketing information is often disconnected from the reality in which a company operates. Nevertheless, it is clear that the number of words, the effort invested in whizzy diagrams, and the over-wrought rhetoric are different from Google’s business-as-usual-approach.
What’s up or what’s covered up? Perhaps I will learn in 2022 and beyond?
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2022
Alleged Collusion Between Meta and Google: Shocking Sort Of
January 17, 2022
“Google and Facebook’s Top Execs Allegedly Approved Dividing Ad Market among Themselves” reports:
The alleged 2017 deal between Google and Facebook to kill header bidding, a way for multiple ad exchanges to compete fairly in automated ad auctions, was negotiated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and endorsed by both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (now with Meta) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an updated complaint filed in the Texas-led antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Fans of primary research can read the 242 page amended filing at this link.
One question arises: How could two separate companies engage is discussions to divide a market? Perhaps one clue is the presence of the estimable lean in professional Sheryl Sandberg, who joined Google 2001 after blazing a trail in economics, McKinsey-type thinking familiar to many today as the pharma brain machine, and then some highly productive US government work.
At the Google she was a general manager. Her Googley behavior earned her a promotion. She was one of the thinkers shaping the outstanding revenue generation system known as AdWords. She added her special touch of McKinsey-ness to AdSense to the Gil Ebaz smart system packaged as Applied Semantics aka Oingo. The important point about applied semantics is that the technology included what I think of as steering or directionality; that is, one uses semantic information to herd the doggies (users) down the trail (consumption of ad inventory. For more on this notion of steering yo8u will want to listen to my interview with Dr. Donna Ingram who addresses this issue in the DarkCyber, 4th series, Number 1 video program to be released on January 18, 2022.
In 2007, chatting at the party helped her migrate from the Google to the company formerly known as Facebook. Ms. Sandberg, Harvard graduate with a chubby contact list, joined the scintillating management team as the social network engineering machine. In 2012, she became a member of the company’s board of directors. She leaned in to her role until some “real” news outfits flipped over the mossy rock of Cambridge Analytica’s benchmark marketing methods.
Ms. Sandberg was recognized by Professor Shoshana Zuboff as the Typhoid Mary of surveillance capitalism. Is that a Meta T shirt yet? He book is a must read. It is called Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. It appeared in 2013 and may be due for an update to include the Cambridge Analytica misunderstanding, the Frances Haugen revelations, and, of course, the current Texas-sized legal matter.
The write up cited above points out a statement from the Google. The main idea is that the idea is “full of inaccuracies and lacks legal merit.”
I believe everything I read on the Internet. I accept the Google search output when I query “Silicon Valley ethics” – Theranos. I trust in the Meta thing because how could two outfits collude? I think such interactions are highly improbable in Silicon Valley, the home of straight shooting.
Stephen E Arnold, January 17, 2022
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