Rah, Rah, Google Under the Monopoly Filter of the US Government
May 16, 2020
Emails. Phone calls. My goodness, news reports from the Wall Street Journal (a Murdoch “real news” outfit) AND ZeroHedge, an insider’s news service.
The basic factoid is that an antitrust lawsuit is chugging along. Twenty two years after leaving the station, government lawyers are ready to board the Google train.
At this moment, anti Googlers are getting their pom poms fluffed. The pro Googlers know that the effort will be like the patient drips of water that form stalactites.
Legal processes take time, and Google will not be in a hurry. Presidents will come and go. Young lawyers will work in their government “socially distanced” spaces, then move into a law firm only to return and pick up where they left off.
Eventually there will be penalties. The penalties will be negotiated.
As the wheels of justice grind forward on government time, the Alphabet Google thing will hurtle along. Its timing is cadenced to Internet time. Lobbyists will lobby. Funds will be donated in proper ways to candidates who are into Google tchotchkes like the treasured Google mouse pad. You know the one. It has multi colored balls on it. A collectors’ item!
The reality is that Google is a government. No government can allow its citizens to revolt. Imagine turning in one’s search box for a Prime membership. Maybe both, but not one or the other.
To sum up: The legal action will chug along. And in the course of that journey, the Google will morph, evolve, and become something quite different.
Like the break up of IBM which never happened, the same destination perhaps. What if a digital Judge Harold H Green chops up Google as AT&T was dismembered. In case you haven’t checked lately, there are two phone companies and one may end up buying the other.
The telecommunications train may have completed a round trip if that happens. Sure, the T Mobile Sprint thing may become a player, but the Bell heads know the number to dial to make a connection.
Net net: Long ride, some excitement, two different time scales. One is on the slow local train; the other is the Osaka Tokyo bullet train.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2020
Microsoft and Cyber Security: Popping Up a Level?
May 15, 2020
Remember when Microsoft “invented” DOS? What happened to Gary? Nothing good.
Remember when Microsoft “invented” compression? What happened to those Stacker people? Poof.
Remember when Microsoft “reinvented” enterprise search? What happened to Fast Search & Transfer’s UNIX licensees? Hasta la vista, muchachos.
Now Microsoft seems to be preparing to convert the cyber security vendors into Microsoft partners. We noted “Microsoft Opens Up Coronavirus Threat Data to the Public.” Another virtue signaling story? Maybe.
The article reports/asserts:
Microsoft is making the threat intelligence it’s collected on coronavirus-related hacking campaigns public…
That seems useful. Here’s another piece of information presented as a quote from the head of the Cyber Security Alliance:
“Overall, the security industry has not seen an increase in the volume of malicious activity; however, we have seen a rapid and dramatic shift in the focus of that criminal activity,” Daniel, a former White House cybersecurity coordinator, told CyberScoop. “The bad guys have shifted their focus to COVID-19 related themes, trying to capitalize on people’s fears, the overall lack of information, and the increase in first-time users of many on-line platforms.”
The article points out:
The 283 threat indicators Microsoft has shared are available through Microsoft’s Graph Security API or Azure Sentinel’s GitHub page.
Open information. Github. Partnering. Fighting disease. — How much goodness can one services firm deliver?
DarkCyber believes that Microsoft is dropping apples that do not fall far from the DOS, Stacker, and Fast Search UNIX tree.
Microsoft wants to be in the thick of cyber security in order to surround and benefit from the money flowing into a starting-to-consolidate cyber sector.
Only this week, a Florida based vendor of investigative software started beating the bushes for a buyer. Consolidation has begun and is accelerating.
How can Microsoft benefit? Those cyber security outfits make darned good Microsoft partners. Installing, tuning, and customizing Microsoft services (on premises and in the cloud) makes good business sense.
Maybe DarkCyber is misinterpreting an act of sincere common good as a dark pattern?
On the other hand, we could ask Gary, a Stacker person, or a Fast Search UNIX licensee. Err, maybe not.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2020
Google: Regular Search Not Up to Covid19 Queries. Who Knew?
May 15, 2020
Google has launched a new semantic search tool designed to help researchers fight this pandemic. The Google AI Blog reveals “An NLU-Powered Tool to Explore COVID-19 Scientific Literature.” As one might expect, researchers around the world have been turning out an enormous number of papers on the disease and how we might fight it. Why does this call for a special tool? Google researcher Keith Hall writes:
“Traditional search engines can be excellent resources for finding real-time information on general COVID-19 questions like ‘How many COVID-19 cases are there in the United States?’, but can struggle with understanding the meaning behind research-driven queries. Furthermore, searching through the existing corpus of COVID-19 scientific literature with traditional keyword-based approaches can make it difficult to pinpoint relevant evidence for complex queries. To help address this problem, we are launching the COVID-19 Research Explorer, a semantic search interface on top of the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), which includes more than 50,000 journal articles and preprints.”
Based on the BERT technology recently injected into the general Google Search, this bespoke semantic AI has been trained on biomedical literature. The team chose to build a hybrid term-neural retrieval model for this platform—a combination of keyword search and neural retrieval; see the article for the technical details. Here’s how the search functions:
“When the user asks an initial question, the tool not only returns a set of papers (like in a traditional search) but also highlights snippets from the paper that are possible answers to the question. The user can review the snippets and quickly make a decision on whether or not that paper is worth further reading. If the user is satisfied with the initial set of papers and snippets, we have added functionality to pose follow-up questions, which act as new queries for the original set of retrieved articles.”
The open-alpha platform is available for free to the research community, and Google plans to continue refining the system over the next few months. May this tool help scientists find solutions that much faster.
Cynthia Murrell, May 15, 2020
Tracking Apps: All Buttoned Up?
May 15, 2020
The United Kingdom has many Big Brother-esque monitoring techniques to keep track of its citizens. Unlike Orwell’s Big Brother where citizens were killed for rebelling, UK residents shout their objections when they have been wronged. The Register shares how a group of “Academics Demand Answers Over Potential Data Time bomb Ticking Inside New UK Contact-Tracing App.”
One hundred seventy-three academics have called out the National Health Service for their COVID-19 contact-tracing app, because it is potentially dangerous. The app does the following:
“Due for release in the coming weeks, NHSX’s contact-tracing app will be the official way that everyone’s contacts with COVID-19-positive people will be tracked. The app will emit an electronic ID from your phone and receive the IDs of other phones with the app installed. If someone develops the coronavirus, everyone who came into contact with that person (i.e. their app came close enough for their ID to be logged by others) will receive an alert.”
The app would track and store people infected with COVID-19 in a centralized, government-controlled database and it is possible the data would not be anonymous. The fear is that the database could be hacked, then people’s information would be stolen or sold. The UK government could also lose more trust with their citizens.
Nothing like a pandemic to make life more secure and “open”?
Whitney Grace, May 15, 2020
British Wit: Carry On
May 15, 2020
Love the tone this person takes. Very person centric. If you want a sign like this, you can get it with a click. Do you have control over what’s output. Of course not.
Get your own carry on sign at this link. Heck of a guy that Olaf Falafel because he hits on many of the management characteristics of Silicon Valley companies and some governmental bureaucrats.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2020
A Food Program Online: Shortages? What Shortages?
May 15, 2020
Retailers have adapted their sales model to serve customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Humanity’s best qualities have also surfaced as we help each other during the bleak present. Combining charity and shopping in one, Walmart and Nextdoor launched a new assistance program. Techcrunch shares the story: “Nextdoor And Walmart Partner On A New Neighborly Assistance Program.”
Nextdoor is a neighborhood social network and the new “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” endeavor will allow vulnerable people to request shopping assistance from their neighbors who are already going to Walmart. Nextdoor users will post assistance requests in local groups via the Web site or app. Users can work out details through private messages or a message board.
The “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” is a low cost alternative to grocery delivery services and will help vulnerable people on fixed incomes.
The program is voluntary and Walmart is not monitoring the program. Walmart only partnered with Nextdoor to facilitate the “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” program.
“‘We’re inspired everyday by the kindness of people around the world who are stepping up and helping out. In recent weeks, we’ve been blown away by the number of members who have raised their hand to run an errand, go to the grocery store, or pick up a prescription for a neighbor,’ said Sarah Friar, Nextdoor CEO, about the feature. ‘We’re grateful for Walmart’s partnership to make this important connection between neighbors around vital services, and we’re proud to come together to ensure everyone has a neighborhood to rely on,’ she said.”
Helping vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic is important, but the people who would use the “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” program could also be made targets via the same service. Nextdoor has useful information about crime which is not comprehensively indexed right now. The data about shopping and the “address / location” of those in need is a potential problem for users and an opportunity for bad actors to know whom to target.
And if there are food shortages? Virtue signals will light up.
Whitney Grace, May 15, 2020
France: Slow Sunday Lunch, Fast Content Removal
May 14, 2020
Mais, oui. The French enjoy Sunday lunch. A long Sunday lunch even in the midst of l’épidémie. However, sometimes the French want fast action. You know, the TGV of giant Internet routing.
The truth and ethics outfit Thomson Reuters’ story “France to Force Web Giants to Delete Some Content Within the Hour.” Exactly what is a “Web giant.”
Here in Harrod’s Creek, a “Web giant” evokes images of the fun and friendly high school science clubs at Facebook and Google. Maybe the Bezos bulldozer drivers qualify, particularly when books which criticize French cuisine are marketed at a discount? I suppose one could add the culture sucking vampires at Netflix. For a student at the Sorbonne whose father is the head of a major French government department, the student’s grousing about a bad Mac keyboard could put Apple in the hot seat.
What about Cisco, IBM, Oracle, or Walmart? Nah, not really. Online travel agencies operating from a trailer in Hoboken, New Jersey? Nope.
Instagram? Yes. Snapchat? Yes. TikTok (wherever that’s located?) Yes. YouTube? Oh, yeah, YouTube. Twitch? Yep, bet your bippy on that one.
The write up presents the real news this way:
Social networks and other online content providers will have to remove paedophile and terrorism-related content from their platforms within the hour or face a fine of up to 4% of their global revenue under a French law…
There’s one hitch in the git along: Getting the money.
Some long Sunday lunches will be needed so the French collections authorities can find a way to get those euros or whatever currencies flow like a wonderful Beaujolais during the November festival.
Taking down content is more difficult than popping a cork. That’s the point. One hour may be too little time for Web giants to do much more than trip over their Airbird clad feet.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2020
We Need Government When We Need It. Other Times, Nah
May 14, 2020
Who knows if this CNBC news story is real. The talking head outfit has been reporting some interesting stories, and “Top Amazon Exec Calls for Federal Price Gouging Law Amid Coronavirus Scams” ranks near the top of DarkCyber’s List of Amazing Management Utterances.
The story reports:
In a blog post Wednesday, Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, called for the establishment of a federal price gouging law. While there are price gouging laws in some states, Huseman said they don’t go far enough in protecting consumers against unfair pricing during crises such as the coronavirus pandemic. Third-party sellers were charging unfair prices for in-demand items like face masks and hand sanitizer.
In rural Kentucky, coronavirus products are as rare as clear thinking about the correlation of basketball victories to academic excellence.
Some questions:
- Can Amazon control the prices its vendor charge for certain products?
- With lower prices, will Amazon increase its existing sales?
- Due to Amazon’s lower prices, will other merchants decrease their prices in order to win business?
DarkCyber is confused about what was taught in Econ 101 using that old chestnut of a book by a dude named Samuelson. Available on Amazon for a mere $71.95.
Does the Bezos bulldozer long for regulation? Really?
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
Semantic SEO: Solution or Runway for Google Ads, Formerly AdWords?
May 14, 2020
I participated in a conversation with Robert David Steele, a former CIA professional, and a former Google software engineer named Zack Vorhies. One of the topics touched upon was Google’s relaxing of its relevance thresholds. A video of extracts from the conversation contains some interesting information; for example, the location of a repository of Google company documents Mr. Vorhies publicly released.
My contribution to the discussion focused on how valuable “relaxed” relevance is. The approach allows Google to display more ads per query. The “relaxed” query means that an ad inventory can be worked through more quickly than it would be IF old fashioned Boolean search were the norm for users. Advertisers’ eyes cross when an explanation of Boolean and “relaxing” a semantic method have to be explained.
DarkCyber’s research team prefers Boolean. None of the researchers need training wheels, Mother Google (which seems to emulate Elsa Krebs of James Bond fame) and WFH Googlers bonding with their mobile phones like a fuzzier, semantic Tommy Bahama methods.
The team spotted “The Newbie’s Information to Semantic Search: Examples and Instruments.” Our interpretation of “newbies” is that the collective noun refers to desperate marketers who have to find a way to boost traffic to a Web site BEFORE going to his or her millennial leader and saying, “Um, err, you know, I think we have to start buying Google Ads.”
Yes, there is a link between the SEO rah rah and the Google online advertising system. The idea is simple. When SEO fails, the owner of the Web page has to buy Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords). In a future post, someone on the team will write about this interesting business process. Just not in this post, thank you.
The article triggering this essay includes what looks like simplified semi-technical diagrams. Plus, there are screenshots featuring Yo Yo Ma. And SEOish jargon; for example:
Coding
Elements
Knowledge as in “knowledge of any Web page.” DarkCyber finds categorical affirmatives a crime against logicians living and semantically dead.
Mapping as in “semantic mapping”
Markup
Semantic
Plus, the write up some to be an advertorial weaponized content object for a product called Optimizer. DarkCyber concluded that the system is a word look up tool, sort of a dumbed down thesaurus for hustlers, unemployed business administration junior college drop outs, and earnest art history majors working in the honorable discipline of SEO.
What’s the semantic analysis convey to a reader unfamiliar with the concepts of “semantic,” “mark up,” and “knowledge.”? The answer, in the view of the DarkCyber team, is less and less useful search results. Mr. Vorhies makes this point in the video cited above. In fact, he wants to go back to the “old Google.” Why? Today’s Google outputs frustratingly off point results.
The article’s main points, based on the DarkCyber interpretation of the article, are:
First, statements like this: “…don’t actually recognize how troublesome it’s to elucidate what’s being communicated with out the assistance of all “beyond-words” indicators.” Yeah, what? DarkCyber thinks the tortured words imply that smart software and data can light up the dark spaces of a user’s query. Stated another way: Search results should answer the user’s question with on point results. Yes, that sounds good. A tiny percentage of people using Google want to conduct an internal reference interview to identify what’s needed, select the online indexes to search, formulate the terms required for a query, and then run the query on multiple systems. Very few users of online search systems wants to scan results, analyzed the most useful content, dedupe and verify data, and then capture facts with appropriate bibliographic information. Many times, this type of process is little for than input for a more refined query. Who has time for a systematic, thorough informationizing process. Why? Saying the word “pizza” to a mobile phone is the way to go. If it works for pizza, the simple query will work for Inconel 235 chemical properties, right? This easy approach is called semantic. In reality it is a canned search with results shaped by advertisers who want clicks.
Second, a person desperately seeking traffic to a Web site must index content on a Web page. Today, “index” is a not-so-useful term. Today one “tags” a page with user assigned terms. Controlled vocabularies play almost no role in modern Web search systems. Just make up a term, then to a TikTok video and become a millionaire. Easy, right? To make tags more useful, one must use synonyms. If a page is about pizza, then a semantic tag is one that might offer the tag “vegetarian.” At least one of the DarkCyber team is old enough to remember being taught how to use a thesaurus and a dictionary. Today, one needs smart software to help the art major navigate the many words available in the English language.
Third, to make the best use of related words, the desperate marketer must embrace “semantic mapping.” The idea is to “visualize relationships between ideas and entities.” (The term “entity” is not defined, which the DarkCyber team is perfectly okay for newbies who need help with indexing.) The idea of a semantic map is a Google generated search page — actually a report of allegedly related data — created by Google’s smart software. In grade school decades ago, students were taken to the library, taught about the “catalog”. Then students would gather information from “sources.” The discovered information was then winnowed and assembled into an essay or a report. If something looked or seemed funny, there was a reference librarian or a teacher to inform the student about the method for verifying facts. Now? Just trust Google. To make the idea vivid, the article provides another Google output. Instead of Yo Yo Ma, the topic is “pizza.” There you go.
The write up reminds the reader to use the third party application Text Optimizer for best results. And the bad news is that “semantic codes” must be attached to these semantically related index terms. One example is the command for deleted text. Indeed, helpful. Another tag is to indicate a direct quotation. No link to a source is suggested. Another useful method for the practicing hustler.
Let’s step back.
The article is all too typical of search engine optimization expertise. The intent is wrapped in the wool of jargon. The main point is to sell a third party software which provides training wheels to the thrashing SEO hungry individual. Plus, the content is not designed to help the user who needs specific information.
The focus of SEO is to add fluff to content. When the SEO words don’t do the job, what does the SEO marketer do?
Buy Google Ads. This is “pay to play”, and it is the one thing that Google relies upon for revenue.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
Deindexing: Does It Officially Exist?
May 14, 2020
DarkCyber noted “LinkedIn Temporarily Deindexed from Google.” The rock solid, hard news service stated:
LinkedIn found itself deindexed from Google search results on Wednesday, which may or may not have occurred due to an error on their part. The telltale sign of an entire domain being deindexed from Google is performing a “site:” search and seeing zero results.
Mysterious.
DarkCyber has fielded two reports of deindexing from Google in the last three days. I one case a site providing automobile data was disappeared. In another, a site focused on the politics of the intelligence sector was pushed from page one to the depths of page three.
Why?
No explanation, of course.
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Is that a reason? Did LinkedIn’s engineers ignore a warning about a problem in AMP?
Google does not make errors. If a problem arises, the cause is the vaunted Google smart software.
DarkCyber’s view is that Google is taking stepped up action to filter certain types of content. We have documented that one Google office has access to controls that can selectively block certain content from appearing in the public facing Web search system. The content is indeed indexed and available to those with certain types of access.
What’s up? Here are our theories?
- Google is trying to deal with problematic content in a more timely manner by relaxing constraints on search engineers working in Google “virtual offices” around the world. Human judgments will affect some Web site. (Contacting Google is as difficult as it has been for the last 20 years.)
- Google wants to make sure that ads do not appear next to content that might cause a big spender to pull away. Google needs the cash. The thought is that Amazon and Facebook are starting to put a shunt in the money pipeline.
- Google is struggling to control costs. Slowing indexing, removing sites from a crawl, and pushing content that is rarely viewed to the side of the Information Superhighway reduces some of the costs associated with serving more than 95 percent of the queries launched by humans each day.
Regardless of the real reason or the theoretical ones, Google’s control over findable content can have interesting consequences. For example, more investigations are ramping up in Europe about the firm’s practices (either human or software centric).
Interesting. Too bad others affected by Google actions are not of the girth and heft of LinkedIn. Oh, well, the one percent are at the top for a reason.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
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