Life with a Digital Father: An Interesting View of Employee Protests at Google
December 14, 2018
I noted “The ‘father of the internet’ says that Google employee backlash to its defense work was just ‘a lot of misunderstanding’.” Someone told me that I should locate this article.
I did.
Here’s the paragraph I circled in very bright yellow:
There is a lot of misunderstanding about the positive benefits of working with [and] in the public sector, the military being a part of that.
The speaker is Vint Cerf, the chief evangelist for Google.
The “that” is a contract with the Department of Defense.
The misunderstanding is or was in the minds of Googlers.
The “positive benefit” may be selling more work to the US government, that is, the military with an interest in smart drones to do the find, fix, and finish business.
After watching most of Google’s testimony before a committee of US elected officials, I do not understand how any Google level person could misunderstand what Google’s senior management says.
Crystal. Clear.
Stephen E Arnold, December 14, 2018
Internet-of-Things Search Engine Census Attracts Seed Funding
December 14, 2018
Last March, we told our readers about several search engines capable of finding Internet-connected devices. One of those, Censys, has now raised a considerable sum in seed funding, we learn from Venture Beat’s article, “Censys, a Search Engine for Internet-Connected Devices, Raises $2.6 million Led by GV and Greylock.” We’re told the search engine monitors “all the devices” that are connected to the Internet. Naturally, the company intends to wield this power for good, informing clients about their potential vulnerabilities. Reporter Anna Hansel writes:
“[Brian] Kelly, who was brought on as Censys’ CEO when it spun out in 2017, told VentureBeat that that the most popular use case for Censys is helping companies see which of their servers have an operating system vulnerability that hasn’t been patched yet. In a recent blog post, Censys detailed how IT staffers could use Censys to search for servers that were affected by a vulnerability in Oracle Database by doing a search for servers running the versions of Oracle that contained the vulnerability, and limit those results to just their devices by entering ranges of IP addresses belonging to the company….
We also noted:
“Censys still allows its 50,000 registered users to make a limited number of queries for free, and academics can apply for a research license to get unlimited access to Censys. For companies that want to make more than 250 queries a month, Censys has subscriptions available from $99 per month to $1,000 a month. Censys says it currently has more than 60 paid customers, including the Department of Homeland Security, NATO, FireEye, and Google.”
Not that is an impressive client roster to have right out the gate. For cost comparison, we’re told Censys’ main competition, Shodan, offers subscriptions from the freelancers’ rate of $59/month to $899/month for corporations, depending on usage. Censys’ technology is based on an open-source tool, developed in 2013 by two of the company’s now-executives, J. Alex Halderman and Zakir Durumeric, called ZMap. This software was able to scan and map every(!) IP address on the Internet in fewer than 45 minutes, a process that formerly took weeks. In 2015 at the University of Michigan, the pair of researchers developed Censys as a user-friendly portal for ZMap, and the commercial startup was launched in 2017. Censys is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Beyond Search assumes that some bad actors will find the system a useful complement to Shodan. Those insecure IoT devices are of interest to some in the bot business.
Cynthia Murrell, December 14, 2018
Belgium and the GOOG
December 14, 2018
In 2012, Google cut a deal with Belgium publishers over content scraping. The idea was that indexing public Web sites was not something that put a smile on some Belgium publishers’ faces. Google’s approach to settlements has warranted its own news item on a Harvard Web site.
Belgium — for the most part — is a quiet, western European country that accepts a couple of languages as standard and cranks out pretty good waffles. Apparently, Belgium does not like it when Google exposes its top secret military bases. Yes, I think exposing a nation’s national secrets is a good reason to be mad and sue. Fast Company reports that, “Belgium Is Suing Google Over Satellite Images Of Military Bases” and Google is not listening to them.
Belgium has asked Google to blur out images of its military bases from its satellite photographs. The country has also requested Google blur out its nuclear power plants and air bases as well. Belgium is not happy:
“The defense ministry made the request citing national security. It’s not clear why Google has not honored that request, as it is a standard one for governments to make of the search giant, which in the past had no problem obscuring images of sensitive military sites. We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will update this post if we hear back.”
A Belgian Google representative explained that his company has worked closely with the Belgium Department of Defense before to change Google’s maps and is disappointed they are now being sued. Google plans to continue working with the Belgian government to resolve the issue.
It is reassuring that Google methods do not discriminate based on the size of a country.
Whitney Grace, December 14, 2018
Mobile Search: Pervasiveness Arrives
December 13, 2018
If you want to order a pizza, there is an app for that. If you want to shop for clothing, there is an app for that. If you want to design an app, there is an app for that and if you want to search on your mobile device you have to use an app…until now. VentureBeat shares that there is a new way to search on mobile devices without having to open an app: “SwiftKey Now Lets You Search The Web From The Android Keyboard App.”
SwiftKey, a Microsoft owned company, invented a new way to search on mobile devices, specifically Android phones. The SwiftKey is a keyboard app that allows users to type quicker on touch screens and now they can search the Internet directly from the keyboard. SwiftKey also users predictive analytics to make suggestions and they can swipe over letters instead of having to individually touch them. It is powered by Bing search, not a surprise.
“The update seems to be mostly about enabling users to share content they find on the web without having to switch between multiple apps on their phone. For example, you can search for local restaurants inside SwiftKey and give friends recommendations by screenshotting, cropping, and sharing the results. Or let’s say a friend sends a message asking you to look into some flight options for an upcoming trip. Rather than switching from WhatsApp to Google or SkyScanner, you can simply bring up the little toolbar at the top of the keyboard, enter your flight criteria, and share what you find through WhatsApp without leaving the service.”
Another handy feature is if a user types in a URL into the search box and takes them directly to the Web site over a search results list.
The SwiftKey is competition for Google’s GBoard. It streamlines mobile search by taking out some of the clunky steps, but it is going to have issues before it is perfected.
Whitney Grace, December 13, 2018
Google: Death Unsolved but Health of Interest
December 13, 2018
By now, data collection has become either a fact of life for many, or a daily battle for others. One major fork in the road for users has become Google’s efforts to acquire data via healthcare. It’s a confusing dive that was made clearer by a recent TechRadar Pro story, “DeepMind’s Big Betrayal? Coming to Terms with Data-Driven Healthcare.”
According to the story:
“By moving DeepMind Health’s Stream team into the main arm of the organization – its parent company Google – concerns were raised over its commitment to patient data privacy. This came with assertions from the organization in 2016 that the patient data would never be used or connected with Google accounts and products.”
Of course, Google denies that they will merge the two datasets. However, Wired brought up some troubling history to the contrary. Namely, the company’s 2008 purchase of DoubleClick, and it’s promise then not to merge data…which, it did.
We’re monitoring Google’s progress on solving death.
Patrick Roland, December 13, 2018
MIT Thinks Google Is Reentering the Chinese Market
December 13, 2018
I was surprised to read that Google is actually reentering the Chinese market. “What Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Visit to Congress Taught Us (Spoiler: Not a Lot)” states:
Despite his best evasive efforts, Pichai confirmed Google is working on re-entering the Chinese market—referring to the controversial search project “Dragonfly.” In a series of carefully-worded statements Pichai said the project was an “internal” one and that there were no plans to launch a product in China “right now.”
I thought Google had shelved this idea. MIT sees it differently.
With rumors of about 100 people working on a Chinese search engine, I thought it was obvious that Google had no intention to make another valiant attempt to tap into the Chinese revenue stream. Chinese regulations are easy to understand: Censorship, surveillance, and social scores are steps on the path to resolving “dominant contradictions.”
As Mao Zedong allegedly said, “To read too many books is harmful.” Filtered search results are definitely okay I assume.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2018
Business Intelligence: A Priority for 2019
December 12, 2018
Despite the emergence of what look like monopolies, many companies want to know what their competition is doing. If you have the cash and expertise, you can use tools from Tibco or Quid. But what if money is not flowing like cash into Facebook and Google?
We noted Business 2 Community’s article: “5 Free Tools To Help You Spy On Your Competitors.”
One tool is Google Alerts that can be set up to email you whenever your competition has new online results, while Social Mention is a search engines that specializes in searching social media and other user generated content Web sites. BuzzSumo is probably one of the best tools:
“Want to create content that gets a ton of engagement like your competition does? BuzzSumo is one of the best tools available for content marketing and spying on your competition. With this tool you can enter the domain of your competition and see what content is performing the best for them. BuzzSumo will display how many shares they get on social media and who their biggest influencers are. This valuable information will help you analyze the top performing content topics and formats so that you can step up your content marketing game.”
Likealyzer is a Facebook analyzer that generates reports on well a Facebook page is doing and how it can be improved, while Woorank does the same except for the competition’s Web site.
Will these tools answer your business questions? Probably not in a comprehensive manner. But the free stuff is worth checking out.
Whitney Grace, December 12, 2018
Publisher Morphs into Software Vendor
December 12, 2018
Just when we thought content management systems were dead, a publisher is jumping in with feet of Clay. That is the publishing platform Fast Company refers to in its headline, “Why New York Magazine is Selling Its Own Technology to Other Media Companies.” It has been some time since the magazine built its in-house platform, Clay, but recently it partnered with Slate to redesign that site’s CMS. That went so well that two other sites are following suit—Golf.com uses the tech for its large collection of data on U.S. golf courses, and it has been built into Radio.com, which streams music while users peruse the site. Writer Cale Guthrie Weissman reports:
“These features require their own bespoke functionalities—which Clay powers—but they weren’t part of an existing template, like the kind you would find in a conventional CMS. In fact, Clay goes against the model of template-based CMSs, and instead allows developers to use its code base and tools to build their own unique features. ‘What I think makes our CMS and model unique is that [clients are] not buying what we have,’ Hallac says. ‘The way Clay works is that licensees are part of a closed, open-sourced network.’ In a sense, all the customers are part of a consortium building their own things. The Clay codebase is shared among all of them, but they fork it and then build whatever they want atop it themselves.”
And search? Alas, it is not mentioned.
Weissman goes on to observe that selling such in-house software is becoming a trend, giving these examples:
“Vox Media, for instance, has been pushing its Chorus software—which offers both a CMS and an ad network. (New York Media is not selling any sort of advertising network products besides the ability to put ads on a site.) The Washington Post, too, has its own platform, called Arc, which is being licensed to newspapers around the world. Differences aside, the idea and price model is generally the same. Media companies find licensees who shell out monthly fees.”
This is indeed an interesting direction for the publishing industry. As for the Clay platform, Weissman suspects this timing may be an effort to make its parent company, New York Media, LLC, look tasty to potential buyers. The company is reported to have already fielded a few offers.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2018
Factualities for December 12, 2018
December 12, 2018
Remember Statistics 101. I even kept my textbook. But in today’s zip line world where the trips are often controlled and surrounded by fluffy polystyrene, looking at hard “real” facts can be fun. Believe ‘em or not:
- $1.25 million US. The amount Google pays a 14 year old developer who resides in India. Source: Rexcharles Blog
- 70 percent cost reduction. Savings reported by FBI after moving its Counterterrorism Division data to Amazon Web Services. Source: Sociable.co
- 2 to 1. The rate at which AMD cpus allegedly outsold Intel CPUs in Germany. Source: Inquirer
- 100 million. Number of accounts at Quora (which has questions and answers about security) lost in security breach. Source: Quora
- $22 million. How much a seven year old makes on YouTube.Source: BBC
- Four. The number of currency counting machines broken during counting of $31 million in paper currency was seized from a Chinese home. Source: Lithub
- 24 number of Amazon workers harmed when robot broke open a container of bear repellent. Source: Futurism
- 87. the percentage of US corporations which have “immature” analytics. Source: Gartner (an outfit which is good with numbers most of the time)
- 47.17. The percentage of Android devices with malware. Source: Express
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2018
Ombudsman or Enforcement Official?
December 11, 2018
As Google’s CEO prepares to read his testimony today (December 11, 2018), I noted this passage from the prepared statement:
Users also look to us to provide accurate, trusted information. We work hard to ensure the integrity of our products, and we’ve put a number of checks and balances in place to ensure they continue to live up to our standards. I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way. To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests. (See this link for the statement.)
I thought about the recent security lapse at Google Plus. Yes, that was the service which was the trigger for a compensation goodie.
But what’s important today is not the reading of Silicon Valley spin.
I suggest that the article “Facebook, Google scramble to contain global fallout from ACCC plan” may have more oomph in the long run. The Australian government appears to be inching toward clamping down on the Google and Facebook. I noted this statement:
Declaring the digital giants have “substantial” market power, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) wants to create an ombudsman to investigate complaints from consumers, media companies and marketers about Google and Facebook over issues such as defamatory comments and fake ads.
As a member of Five Eyes, Australia may be pointing the direction in which Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US will move.
In this context, the Google statement does little to change the reality of what the company does and how it operates. For example, there is employee push back. Another example, there is the behavior of senior executives. One more: There are the claims of Foundem and other vendors who allege that Google willfully took steps to swizzle the search results.
The question becomes, “Is Australia appointing an ombudsman to deal with Google and Facebook or an enforcement officer?”
Enforcement? Laws, I assume, will follow.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2018
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