Brave Brave: Challenging the Google
April 9, 2020
Taking on a big tech company like Google is like tilting windmills. It is near impossible to win a case against big conglomerates worth billions of dollars, but the possibility exists. That is why the “Brave Browsers Creators Call Google Out for GDRP Violation” says Forklog. Google maintains its power and profit, because it collects user data and sells it to third parties. Google is supposed to alert users how it uses their data, but that does not appear to happen.
Brave is a private block-chain browser and its creators filed a complaint with the UK Competition and Markets Authority CMA against Google for infringing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) purpose limitation. This violation gives Google a monopoly. Brave specifically filed the complaints with the Irish Data Protection Commission. Brave reports that the Irish regulator has monitored how Google handles user data and they have also informed other European regulators.
Dr. Johnny Ryan, Brave’s Chief Policy and Industry Relations Officer, explained Google allows user data to freely flow between its subsidiaries:
“Having everyone’s personal data does not mean Google is allowed to use that data across its entire business, for whatever purposes it wants. Rather, it has to seek a legal basis for each specific purpose, and be transparent about them,’ Dr Ryan argued, ‘But Brave’s new evidence reveals that Google reuses our personal data between its businesses and products in bewildering ways that infringe the purpose limitation principle. Google’s internal data free-for-all infringes the GDPR.’”
Google apparently has a monopoly because it leverages data from one of their markets and funnels it into others. The complaint from Brave points out that Google uses vague language to communicate with users how their data is used.
Other than violating users’ privacy, Google’s misuse of data could do more harm, such as price gauging, political misinformation, and other discrimination. Brave has offered to assist the CMA in further investigation. Brave has good reason to complain against Google, because monopolies are illegal in most western countries. The problems will their argument get much attention?
Whitney Grace, April 9, 2020
Google and Home Schooling
April 8, 2020
Ah, Google—good enough is good enough, right? Except when a pandemic comes along, and good enough really won’t cut it. Digital Trends reports, “Google Chromebook Quirk Forces a Decision: Parental Controls or Schoolwork?” Now that schools have been forced to close and students are studying remotely, a Google Chromebook/ Family Link foible is suddenly much more of a problem than when it was discovered last year. Writer Mythili Sampathkumar explains:
“When school districts all over the country announced they would be shutting down to help stem the spread of the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, many parents purchased the relatively inexpensive Chromebooks to mimic students’ classroom experience. Parents can use Google’s Family Link app to control what websites and apps are accessed, when, and for how long for accounts identified as minors. But some students can’t sign into their schoolwork using those accounts. They need to use school-provided email addresses to access their schoolwork through Google Classroom — but Family Link parental controls can’t be synced to those school accounts. The Family Link app doesn’t allow parents to add a school email account for the same child user, preventing the child from using different logins to sign into the Chromebook and Google Classroom. It seems the situation is forcing parents to choose between what the Family Link website itself called ‘healthy digital habits’ and accessing learning materials for school during the lockdown, a choice many in the forum and those who spoke to Digital Trends do not think they should have to make.”
Schools do not have to worry about leveraging Family Link’s safe browsing features—they typically place universal security restrictions on their entire networks. Doing so at home, though, is not a good option for most parents. Not only would that block certain sites for parents, it would also restrict when they could use their devices. That just won’t do for parents who suddenly must work from home and help their kids with schoolwork. Will Google step up and fix the problem? Perhaps there is a way to cut down on Chrome glare?
Cynthia Murrell, April 8, 2020
To Monetize Is Not to Sell, Contends Google
April 7, 2020
Quite gradually, governments seem to be waking up to the problem of online privacy. The passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act, which went into effect on January first, is one example. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains how Google is sidling around the law’s provisions in its article, “Google Says it Doesn’t ‘Sell’ Your Data. Here’s How the Company Shares, Monetizes, and Exploits it.”
Journalist Bennett Cyphers reminds us just how far Google has cast its data nets: Worldwide, the company commands 62% of mobile and 69% of desktop browsers; the operating systems on 71% of mobile devices; 94% of apps in the Play store; and 92% of internet searches. It runs code on about 85% of the sites on the Web while 73% of adults in the US employ YouTube. That is a mind-boggling amount of data on billions of people.
Though Google makes tens of billions of dollars each year off this data, it claims it is not technically selling it. The write-up explains two ways the company splits that hair. First, it builds user profiles filled with statistics and interests that it then sells to advertisers. Marketers then use those profiles to craft targeted campaigns. The second method is called real-time bidding; Cyphers explains:
“Real-time bidding is the process by which publishers auction off ad space in their apps or on their websites. In doing so, they share sensitive user data—including geolocation, device IDs, identifying cookies, and browsing history—with dozens or hundreds of different ad tech companies. Each RTB auction typically sees user data passing through three different layers of companies on its way from a device to an advertiser: supply-side platforms (or SSPs) collect user data to sell, ad exchanges organize auctions between them and advertisers, and demand-side platforms (or DSPs) ‘bid’ on behalf of advertisers to decide which ads to show to which people. These auctions take milliseconds, constantly churning away in the background of your browsing activity as companies at every level of the process share and collect more and more data to add to their existing profiles of users. … Real-time bidding is a convoluted, opaque system of data collection and sharing that enables profiling and surveillance by advertisers, data brokers, hedge funds, and ICE. It is at the center of everything that’s wrong with privacy in tech.”
The article describes how Google got this much power and elaborates on how it wields it, complete with
Illustrations and examples. Navigate there for those details. Not surprisingly, Cyphers concludes with a call for stronger laws, ones that make privacy the default setting. Is it too late to re-bottle that genie?
Cynthia Murrell, April 7, 2020
Google: Ever Amusing, Ever Innovative
April 3, 2020
Quick note about two Google services. (If you are a Googler, jump to another project, preferably one with traction.)
First, Google innovators are going to duplicate to some degree the TikTok approach to video. Hopefully the me too service will lack some of the Chinese craftsmanship. The world does need more 30 second videos, just with pre roll, in video, and post roll advertising. Why didn’t Google think of this ad inventory burner quicker? Right, “think.”
Second, Google has learned (finally) that the Nextdoor.com approach is tough to implement in India. (Google’s service is neighborly for a few months more. The Google announced that it will keep its competitive service Neighbourly alive until October 2020, probably with a lone intern keeping the lights on. Like enterprise search, Neighbourly learned that some services require a bit more than Google imagining sales and sustainable revenue. (Hey, those payoff require work by someone.)
To sum up: One innovation arrives; another departs. So life goes for the Google. I was taught to spell neighborly without the stiff upper lip “u.” I know, I know. I am not neighborly and I don’t get the short video thing.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2020
Nervous about AI? Google Uses It and You Do Too
April 2, 2020
Despite the deployment of smart speakers, virtual assistants, language translation automation, and many other technologies we use every day, AI still feels like a future innovation. We are probably stuck on the idea that AI means walking, talking robots, but AI, in fact, is already part of our daily lives. Techni Pages wrote, “5 Uses Of Advanced AI Already Being Used By Google” to demonstrate how AI is currently being used.
Have you ever sent a text message using the voice-to-text feature on your mobile phone? Surprise, that is a form AI! Human language is very complex and in order for machines to understand it, Google uses Deep Neural Networks to model language sounds. Current endeavors have designed voice-to-text to be faster, siphon out more noise, and more accurate.
Google Maps is another huge AI project. Powered by real time predictions, Google Maps delivers the fastest route to destinations. It takes into consideration accidents, traffic, and constructions so users can avoid those hindrances. The Google Assistant is another AI tool that acts as your own personal assistant to perform Internet searches, schedule appointments, set reminders, and make simple notes. Gmail also uses AI to categorize emails and filter spam from your inbox.
Google offers the Cloud AutoML too:
“The Cloud AutoML is an advanced AI that helps developers to create other AI smart solutions. The machine learning models are of high quality and enable developers to create AI that suits their business needs. Cloud AutoML has state-of-the-art performance and also enables the machine learning to happen with minimal effort since it uses neural architecture search technology and transfer learning.”
Google is an industry leader in developing innovative AI tools. The AI tools we use might not be robots, but they are very helpful.
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2020
As Google Relies More on Its Smart Software, Smart Software Sells Protective Masks. Really?
March 19, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Senators Blast Google For Facemask Ads Amid Coronavirus, Demand FTC Action.” The senators are Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.
What agitated these luminaries? The write up reports:
…despite Google announcing a ban on ads for protective facemasks last week, their staff were easily able to find Google ads for facemasks over the past week.
Who blew the whistle on Google’s smart software and ad serving machine?
The write up reports:
The senators told the FTC, “our staffs were consistently served dozens of ads for protective masks and hand sanitizer,” often when browsing news stories about the coronavirus.
DarkCyber thought big contributors and lobbyists were best positioned to pass information to these stalwarts of democracy.
The write up further offers this factoid:
“These ads, from a range of different advertisers, were served by Google on websites for outlets such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, CNBC, The Irish Times, and myriad local broadcasting affiliates,” the senators told the FTC. Google has made repeated representations to consumers that its policies prohibit ads for products such as protective masks. Yet the company appears not to be taking even rudimentary steps to enforce that policy,” they added.
Perhaps the humans at Google agreed to stop these ads. However, the memo may not have been processed by the smart ad sales system. Latency happens.
Some humans with knowledge of the offending module appear to have implemented a fix. (DarkCyber thought that Google’s code was not easily modified. Objectivity, relevance, and maybe revenue.
We were not able to get Google to display surgical mask ads as of 0947 Eastern on March 18, 2020. Progress and evidence that Google can control some of what appears in search results pages. Contradiction? Nope, just great software, managers, and engineers.
Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2020
The Google: Geofence Misdirection a Consequence of Good Enough Analytics?
March 18, 2020
What a surprise—the use of Google tracking data by police nearly led to a false arrest, we’re told in the NBC News article, “Google Tracked his Bike Ride Past a Burglarized Home. That Made him a Suspect.” Last January, programmer and recreational cyclist Zachary McCoy received an email from Google informing him, as it does, that the cops had demanded information from his account. He had one week to try to block the release in court, yet McCoy had no idea what prompted the warrant. Writer Jon Schuppe reports:
“There was one clue. In the notice from Google was a case number. McCoy searched for it on the Gainesville Police Department’s website, and found a one-page investigation report on the burglary of an elderly woman’s home 10 months earlier. The crime had occurred less than a mile from the home that McCoy … shared with two others. Now McCoy was even more panicked and confused.”
After hearing of his plight, McCoy’s parents sprang for an attorney:
“The lawyer, Caleb Kenyon, dug around and learned that the notice had been prompted by a ‘geofence warrant,’ a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data — drawn from users’ GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections — from everyone nearby. The warrants, which have increased dramatically in the past two years, can help police find potential suspects when they have no leads. They also scoop up data from people who have nothing to do with the crime, often without their knowing ? which Google itself has described as ‘a significant incursion on privacy.’ Still confused ? and very worried ? McCoy examined his phone. An avid biker, he used an exercise-tracking app, RunKeeper, to record his rides.”
Aha! There was the source of the “suspicious” data—RunKeeper tapped into his Android phone’s location service and fed that information to Google. The records show that, on the day of the break-in, his exercise route had taken him past the victim’s house three times in an hour. Eventually, the lawyer was able to convince the police his client (still not unmasked by Google) was not the burglar. Perhaps ironically, it was RunKeeper data showing he had been biking past the victim’s house for months, not just proximate to the burglary, that removed suspicion.
Luck, and a good lawyer, were on McCoy’s side, but the larger civil rights issue looms large. Though such tracking data is anonymized until law enforcement finds something “suspicious,” this case illustrates how easy it can be to attract that attention. Do geofence warrants violate our protections against unreasonable searches? See the article for more discussion.
Cynthia Murrell, March 18, 2020
Click Money from Google: A Digital Dodo?
March 15, 2020
At the beginning of 2020, Google released its 2019 end of year financial report and some amazing surprises were revealed. ZDNet has the details in the article, “The Mysterious Disappearance Of Google’s Click Metric.” For the first time since acquiring YouTube, Google shared revenue for YouTube and its cloud IT business, but they removed information about how much money the company made from clicks or the Cost-per-Click (CPC) plus its growth.
What does this mean for Google? It is even more confusing that the Wall Street analysts did not question the lack of information. The truth is something that Google might not want to admit, but the key to their revenue is dying and they are not happy.
“Google has a rapidly deflating advertising product, sometimes 29% less revenue per click, every quarter, year-on-year, year after year…. Every three months Google has to find faster ways of expanding the total number of paid clicks by as much as 66%. How is this a sustainable business model? There is an upper limit to how much more expansion in paid links can be found especially with the shift to mobile platforms and the constraints of the display. And what does this say about the effectiveness of Google’s ads? They aren’t very good and their value is declining at an astounding and unstoppable pace.”
Google might start placing more ads on its search results and other services. It sounds like, however, Google will place more ineffective ads in more places. Google’s ads have eroded efficiency for years, plus there is the question of whether more bots, less humans are clicking these ads. Clicks do not create brands and most people ignore ads. Don’t you love ads?
Whitney Grace, March 15, 2015
Google and Amazon: Two Dominant Dogs Snap and Snarl at One Another
March 13, 2020
DarkCyber read “How Google Kneecapped Amazon’s Smart TV Efforts.” The uptake on criminal lingo continues. For those not hip to the argot of some technology savvy professionals, the Urban Dictionary defines the concept this way:
The act of permanently destroying someone’s kneecaps. Often done with a firearm (as popularized in film and television), a baseball bat or lead pipe or other blunt instrument, or a power drill (often used in conjunction with a countersunk drill bit and popular with the IRA).
Yes, the elegance of business competition requires these metaphors it seems. DarkCyber thinks the article is “about” the collision of cleverness and rapaciousness. But enough of our philosophical wanderings. What did Google do to Amazon, assuming online services have joints which keep bone and joint doctors busy?
The write up states:
Any company that licenses Google’s Android TV operating system for some of its smart TVs or even uses Android as a mobile operating system has to agree to terms that prevent it from also building devices using forked versions of Android like Amazon’s Fire TV operating system, according to multiple sources. If a company were to break those terms, it could lose access to the Play Store and Google’s apps for all of its devices.
Ah, ha! The kneecapping is not physical; those making devices sign a contract.
Plus, there’s another Googley twist of the 6 mm drill bit, a metaphor for kneecapping explained above:
At the center of Google’s efforts to block Amazon’s smart TV ambitions is the Android Compatibility Commitment — a confidential set of policies formerly known as the Anti-Fragmentation Agreement — that manufacturers of Android devices have to agree to in order to get access to Google’s Play Store. Google has been developing Android as an open-source operating system, while at the same time keeping much tighter control of what device manufacturers can do if they want access to the Play Store as well as the company’s suite of apps. For Android TV, Google’s apps include a highly customized launcher, or home screen, optimized for big-screen environments, as well as a TV version of its Play Store. Google policies are meant to set a baseline for compatible Android devices and guarantee that apps developed for one Android device also work on another. The company also gives developers some latitude, allowing them to build their own versions of Android based on the operating system’s open source code, as long as they follow Google’s compatibility requirements.
Interesting.
How will the issue be resolved? Legal eagles will flap and squawk. Customers can vote with their purchases. But TVs cost very little because “advertising” and data are often useful sources of revenue. Regulators can regulate, just as they have since Google and Amazon discovered the benefits of their interesting business activities.
Regardless of the outcome between the assailant and the victim, the article reveals some of the more charming facets of two “must have” businesses. How can a person advance his or her understanding of the kneecapping allegation.
DarkCyber will run a Google query for business ethics and purchase a copy of Business Ethics: Best Practices for Designing and Managing Ethical Organizations from Amazon. You have to find your own way through the labyrinths of the underworld, you gangster, no mercy, no malice, as the pundit, scholar, entrepreneur, and media phenomenon Scott Gallaway has said.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2020
Google Creates a Podcast about Marketing
March 13, 2020
Just a quick note. Google now outputs “Think with Google Podcast.” You can listen to show #2 at this link. the subject is “Captivating Creative.” Not much in terms of technical information, but the Mad Ave types may go ga-ga with the breezy style and fluffy content. One amusing aspect of the show is that Google wants to know more about you. Listeners are enjoined to take a survey about the show. The appeal takes place before the show. Imagine. Google wants to know more about you. What a surprise. Now how about a search engine for podcasts? Oh, right. Google has one. It’s super too.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2020
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