Google Chrome License
September 3, 2008
Update: September 4, 2008, 9 30 pm Eastern
Useful summary of the modified Chrome license terms. Navigate to TapTheHive at http://tapthehive.com/discuss/This_Post_Not_Made_In_Chrome_Google_s_EULA_Sucks
Update: September 4, 2008, 11 30 am Eastern
Related links about the Chrome license:
- Change in Chrome license terms here
- Key Stroke Logging here
- Security issues here
- Back Peddling on terms here
Update: September 3, 2008, 9 18 am Eastern
WebWare’s take on the Chrome license agreement. Worth reading. It is here.
Original Post
If true, this post by Poss is a keeper. You can read his original article on Shuzak beta here. The juicy part is an extract from the Chrome terms of service. I quote Mr. Shuzak beta:
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
As I understand this passage, Googzilla has rights to what I do, what I post, what I see via its browser. Seems pretty reasonable for a Googzilla bent on conquering the universe. What do you think? Before you answer, check out the data model I included in my KMWorld column in July 2008.
Stephen Arnold, September 3, 2008
Google: Enterprise Video
September 3, 2008
Savvy companies have been uploading short videos to YouTube.com. When these are given non obvious names, the corporate videos are effectively “hiding in plain sight.” What’s the organization get from this upload? For one thing, Google picks up the storage and bandwidth charges. How does a company make use of these videos? Easy. The company provides the non obvious file name to an employee or some other viewer.
Well, Google has decided to formalize its enterprise video service. You can read Wired Magazine’s good discussion of the service here. The writer is Betsy Schiffman and the story is “Google Adds a Dash of Video to Enterprise Apps.” For me the most important point in the write up was:
As part of Google Apps Premier Edition, the company rolled out a video-sharing app, which lets business users upload and share videos — such as company announcements and updates — in a private environment. Just like YouTube, users can see how many times the video has been viewed, and they can rate, tag and comment on the videos. The key difference between the enterprise app and YouTube though, is that the video is “secure” and isn’t hanging out for the world to see.
I see this an important step for Google for three reasons:
- Video may not appeal to me but it is the cat’s pajamas for most of the 20 somethings and younger. I think video is brain candy, but it’s here to stay. Google is responding to a hunger for this dross.
- The video service is a test of Google’s security functions that effectively creates what I call in my forthcoming Google monograph a “GPN”; that is, Google private network. I wrote about several Google patent documents’ disclosure of this type of connection, and now a portion of these innovations is available.
- Google has new options for monetizing video, long a loss leader for the company.
- Google’s has an invention that allows the company to act as a matchmaker between talent and those who want to hire that talent. One possible application of this matchmaking service is to allow Google to act as a “virtual” agent in matching a customer who wants a video with those who can deliver.
In short, I think this, like Chrome, is an important step for the GOOG. Agree? Disagree?
Stephen Arnold, September 3, 2008
Google: More Chrome Browser Goodness
September 3, 2008
In my Google Version 2.0, published by Infonortics, I present a table of patent documents that act as beacons for Google’s engineers. On September 2, 2008, the USPTO published US 7421432 B1. Among the inventors of the “Hypertext Browser Assistant” is Larry Page. He is assisted by two super wizards, Urs Höelzle and Monika Henzinger. My research into Google’s investments in technology suggested that when either Mr. Brin’s or Mr. Page’s names appear on a patent document, that innovation is important. You and the legions of super smart MBAs who disdain grunting through technical documents will probably disagree. Nevertheless, I want to call the abstract for this invention to the attention of my two or three readers.
A system facilitates a search by a user. The system detects selection of one or more words in a document currently accessed by the user, generates a search query using the selected word(s), and retrieves a document based on the search query. When the document includes one or more links corresponding to a linked document, the system analyzes each of the links, pre fetches the linked documents corresponding to a number of the links, and presents the document to the user. The system receives selection of one of the links and retrieves the linked document corresponding to the selected link. The system identifies one or more pieces of information in the retrieved document, determines a link to a related document for each of the identified pieces of information, and provides the determined links with the related document to the user.
My “pal” Cyrus, a Google demi-wizard, thinks that I create Google images in Photoshop. No, Cyrus, these images appear in Google’s patent documents, which I suggest you and your fellow demi-wizards read before opining on my Photoshop skills. You will see that the browser represented is not Mozilla’s, Microsoft’s or Opera’s.
What this invention purports to do is provide intelligent “training wheels” to help users find information they are seeking. The system uses a range of Google infrastructure functions to perform its “helper” functions; for example, predictive math, parsed content, and related objects. A more detailed analysis will appear in the Google monograph I am preparing for Infonortics, the publisher who has an appetite for my analyses of Googley innovations. Look for the monograph before the New Year.
If you want to revel in the Page-meister’s golden prose, you can download a copy for free from the outstanding USPTO Web site here. Hint: reading the syntax examples carefully. The patent narrative suggests that this “training wheels” function will work in a standard browser, my hunch is that some of the more sophisticated functions known to “those skilled in the art” will require Chrome. After you have read the patent document, feel free to post your views of the technology Google has “invented”.
Oh, Cyrus, if you have difficulty locating Google’s patent documents, give me a call. I’m in the system.
Stephen Arnold, September 3, 2008
Microsoft Squeezes Google’s Privacy Policies
September 3, 2008
ZDNet (Australia) reported on August 29, 2008, about Microsoft’s perception of Google and its approach privacy. I saw the post in the ZDNet UK Web log. (I have to tell you that the failure to have a common index to the ZDNet content is less than helpful. If Bill Ziff were still running the outfit, I believe this oversight would have been addressed and quickly. Ah, youth and the lack of corporate memory. The folks don’t know why I am risking a heart attack over this sort of carelessness.) Liam Tung wrote “Microsoft Exec: Google Years behind Us on Privacy”. You can read the full UK article here. I haven’t been able to locate the Australian original thanks to ZDNet’s fine search system.
For me, the key point in the article was:
Google had not invested enough to build privacy into its products, citing Street View as a prime example.
What I find interesting is that Google does not break out its investments. The company prefers, like Amazon, to offer a big fuzzy ball of numbers. As a result, I don’t think I or anyone outside of Google’s finance unit knows what Google spends on privacy. The notion that a company trying to make headway in online advertising, personalization, and social functions is going to pay much attention to privacy tickles my funny bone. Yahoo’s disappointing ad performance might be attributable to the company’s alleged inability to deliver rolled up demographics so advertisers can pinpoint where to advertise to reach which specific demographic sector. If Microsoft wants to make real money from its $400 million purchase of Ciao.com, the company may have to revisit its own privacy policies.
Google’s picture taking is a privacy flash point. However, based on my research, there are other functions at Google that may warrant further research. Microsoft may be forced to follow in Google’s very big paw prints in its quest for money and catching up to Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, September 3, 2008
Winnipeg Whining: Microsoft Failures
September 2, 2008
The one-two punch of my mother’s death and a grueling trip to Utah left me listless and more incoherent than usual. I was catching up on items snagged by my newsreader, my crawler, and my contacts who forward me ideas and links. I came across a quite interesting post by “D’Arcy from Winnipeg”. The title of the article was “Apparently .NET Is a Failure”. She identified a PCMag.com story that cataloged Microsoft failures. I missed the PCMag.com story even though I once worked for Ziff Communications, the company that owned the magazine in its salad days. I stopped listening to the PC Magazine podcast in favor of less hip, less annoying discussions of technology. I guess I’m getting old, but the present editorial team lacks the siss, boom, bah of the group that fueled the magazine in the 1980s. You can read the original list of alleged flops here.
D’Arcy does a very good job of summarizing the Dot Net section, and she opined:
The inclusion of .NET in this list is BS, and IMO its an example of irresponsible journalism. Spouting your opinion about something is one thing…having no data, examples, or …anything!…to back up your statements is nothing but spouting off… What’s worse is that PCMag is recognized, at some level, as a quality, reliable publication. When an executive editor, which Jeremy Kaplan apparently is, puts his name to something like this it brings down the authenticity, objectivity, and reliability of information published in print and online of PCMagazine. Since Jeremy and Sascha both come from more hardware and peripheral type backgrounds, maybe they should stick to making comments about those things that they are experienced and knowledgeable about and leave any opinions on development products to those qualified to make them.
D’Arcy is definitely someone who speaks clearly and without the wool-wrapped fuzzy rhetoric that obfuscates instead of clarifies. I’m on the fence about some Microsoft technologies, but I agree with D’Arcy on this post. Those Winnipeg winters season people to be tough. Write on, D’Arcy.
Stephen Arnold, September 2, 2008
Google Apps: Limited to Low Dollar Buyers
September 2, 2008
Guy Creese, a wizard consultant with the high octane The Burton Group, has analyzed Google Apps and concluded:
More nimble SMBs and cash-crunched universities will be the sweet spot for Google Apps.
You can read his analysis and plug for his prognosticative abilities here. Mr. Creese, high octane consultant, identifies four factors that have dampened enthusiasm for Google Apps. I agree with these. For example, who doubts that large organizations are conservative, slow moving, and generally indifferent to the technical trends that make college students hop about like Rafael Nadal after winning a hard fought point.
My own research suggests another couple of reasons behind the lackluster success of Google in the giant companies where IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.
Google is not very good at sales. It use of partners is idiosyncratic. The professionalism of the Google enterprise team is not in doubt, but the approach is sufficiently math club like to make Fortune 1000 buyers buy Google stuff that provides a bit more control; for example, the Google Search Appliance and Google geospatial services. The cloud services need more than good cheer and nerd bonhomie to close a deal. Keep in mind, however, that Google closed a deal for 1.5 million mail boxes in New South Wales, but school districts aren’t big time companies where The Butler Group trolls for work.
Finally, Google’s enterprise approach often leads to exasperation on the part of the buyer. Change is underway. In fact, Google commissioned a study to find out what was off track. I haven’t seen the results, but I hear that changes in Google’s enterprise unit are coming.
Stephen Arnold, September 2, 2008
SharePoint Search: A Six Part Series!
September 2, 2008
When I was growing up on the prairie, my mother and father would as a special treat drop me at the Beverly Theater. For $0.15 I could watch one feature and a serial. The idea was that youngsters like me would come back each week to find out if the hero survived the cliff hanger on which each installment ended. Now SharePoint magazine brings me the equivalent about SharePoint search. I don’t have to pay $0.15. I can navigate here and revel in each installment’s information payload. Who would have thought SharePoint search was so exciting? Well, anyone who has tried to scale SharePoint using the up and out technique and staying below the 40 or 50 million document limit of the system. Oh, there’s also the excitement of creating pages using the two-part method involving “FrontPage” dressed in smart new pants and matching shirt. Also, there’s the issue of getting my old pal SQL Server to respond quickly. I want to add the thrill of chasing down security setting if some helpful person makes a local security change on one of the servers hosting a “site” and its content. The series is part of the Arno Nel Web log here. The first installment called “Customizing Search Series—Introduction” is here in theory. It’s about:
MOSS Search capabilities and its customization. This article serves as an introduction to search and will define several key items within the administration and configuration thereof.
When I accessed the site on August 30, 2008, I got a blank page and a time out. SharePoint fans will recognize that issue. Today (September 1, 2008), I am getting a very helpful 404 error. Give the urls a whirl. If the site is down, you are getting some insight into the behavior one often confronts in a full scale SharePoint search deployment. Enjoy.
Stephen Arnold, September 2, 2008
Google Browser: ABCs of Information Access
September 1, 2008
A is for Apple. The company uses WebKit in Safari. B is for browser, the user’s interface to cloud applications and search. C is for containers, Google’s nifty innovation for making each window a baby window on functions. The world is abuzz today (September 1, 2008) with Google’s browser project. The information, according to Google Blogoscoped, appeared in a manga or comic book. You can read that story here. There are literally dozens of posts appearing every hour on this topic, and I want to highlight a few of the more memorable posts and offer several comments.
First, the most amusing post to me is Kara Swisher’s post here. She a pal of the GOOG and, of course, hooked up with the media giant, currently challenged for revenues and management expertise The Wall Street Journal. The best think about her story is that Google’s not creating an extension of the Google environment. Nope, Google is “igniting a new browser war”. I thought Google and Microsoft were at odds already. After a decade, a browser war seems so 1990s to me. But she’s a heck of a writer.
Second, Carnage4Life earned a chuckle with its concluding statement about the GOOG:
Am I the only one that thinks that Google is beginning to fight too many wars on too many fronts. Android (Apple), OpenSocial (Facebook), Knol (Wikipedia), Lively (IMVU/SecondLife), Chrome (IE/Firefox) and that’s just in the past year.
Big companies don’t have the luxury of doing one thing. Google is more in the “controlled chaos” school of product innovation. Of course, Google goes in a great many directions. The GOOG is not a search engine; it is an application platform. It makes sense to me to see the many tests, betas, and probes. Google’s been doing this innovation by diffusion since its initial public offering and never been shy about its approach or its success and failure rate.
Finally, I enjoyed this comment by Mark Evans in “Google Browser or Slow News Day” here. He writes:
The bigger question is whether a Google browser will resonate with computers users. Many people are using an increasing number of Google services (search, GMail, Blogger, etc.) but are they ready to surrender to Google completely by dumping Firefox and IE?
My take is a bit different. Two points without much detail. I have more but this is, after all, a free Web log written by an addled goose.
- Why do we assume that Google is suddenly working on a browser? Looking at the screen shots of Google patent documents over the last couple of years, the images do not look like Firefox, Opera or Safari. Indeed when I give talks and show these screen shots, some Googlers like the natty Cyrus are quick to point out that these are photoshopped. Not even some canny Googlers pay attention to what the brainiacs in the Labs are doing to get some Google functions to work reliably.
- Google’s patent documents make reference to janitors, containers, and metadata functions that cannot be delivered in the browsers I use. In order to make use of Google’s “inventions”, the company needs a controlled environment. Check out my dataspaces post and the IDC write up on this topic for a glimpse of the broader functionality that demands a controlled computing environment.
I’m not sure I want to call this alleged innovation a browser. I think it is an extension of the Googleplex. It is not an operating system. Google needs a data vacuum cleaner and a controlled computing environment. The application may have browser functions, but it is an extension, not a solution, a gun fight, or an end run around Firefox.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2008
The Knol Way: A Google Wobbler on the Information Highway
September 1, 2008
Harry McCracken greeted Google on September 1, 2008, with a less than enthusiastic discussion of Knol, Google’s user-generated repository of knowledge. The story ran in Technologizer, a useful Web log for me. You can read the full text of the story here. The thesis of the write up, as I understand the argument, is that while a good idea, the service lacks depth. The key point for me was this statement:
Knol’s content will surely grow exponentially in the months to come, but quantity is only one issue. Quality needs to get better, too–a Knol that’s filled with swill would be pretty dismaying, and the site in its current form shows that the emphasis on individual authors creates problems that Wikipedia doesn’t have. Basic functionality needs to get better, too: The Knol search engine in its current form seems to be broken, and I think it needs better features for separating wheat from chaff. And I’d give the Knol homepage a major overhaul that helps people find the best Knols rather than featuring some really bad ones.
I agree. One important point is that the Wikipedia method of allowing many authors to fiddle has its ups and downs. Knol must demonstrate that it is more than a good idea poorly executed and without the human editorial input that seems to be necessary under its present set up.
I have a mental image of the Knol flying across the information super highway and getting hit by a speeding Wikipedia. Splat. Feathers but no Knol.
In closing, let me reiterate that I think Knol is not a Wikipedia. It is a source of input for Google’s analytical engines. The idea is that an author is identified with a topic. A “score” can be generated so that the GOOG has another metric to use when computing quality. My hunch is that the idea is to get primary content that copyright free in the sense that Google doesn’t have to arm wrestle publishers who “own” content. The usefulness to the user is a factor of course, but I keep thinking of Knol as useful to Google first, then me.
Will Google straighten up and fly right the way the ArnoldIT.com logo does? Click here to see the logo in action. Very consistent duck, I’m sure. Will Knol be as consistent? I don’t know. Like the early Google News, the service is going to require programmatic and human resources,which may be a while in coming. For now, Google is watching clicks. When the Google has sufficient data, then more direction will be evident. If there’s no traffic, then this service will be an orphan. I hope Googzilla dips into its piggy back to make Knol more useful and higher quality.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2008
IBM and Sluggish Visualizations: Many-Eyes Disappointment
September 1, 2008
IBM’s Boston research facility offers a Web site called Many Eyes. This is another tricky url. Don’t forget the hyphen. Navigate to the service at http://www.many-eyes.com. My most recent visit to the site on August 31, 2008, at 8 pm eastern timed out. The idea is that IBM has whizzy new visualization tools. You can explore these or, when the site works, upload your own data and “visualize” it. The site makes clear the best and the worst of visualization technology. The best, of course, is the snazzy graphics. Nothing catches the attention of a jaded Board of Directors’ compensation committee like visualizing the organization’s revenue. The bad is that visualization is still tricky, computationally intensive, and capable of producing indecipherable diagrams. A happy quack to the reader who called my attention to this site, which was apparently working at some point. IBM has a remarkable track record in making its sites unreliable and difficult to use. That’s a type of consistency I suppose.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2008
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