Google Takes Stand — Against Questionable Content. Will AI Get It Right?
May 24, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
The Internet is the ultimate distribution system for illicit material, especially pornography. A simple Google search yields access to billions of lewd material for free and behind paywalls. Pornography already has people in a tizzy but the advent of deepfake porn material is making things worse. Google is upset about deepfakes and decided to take a moral stand Extreme Tech says: “Google Bans Ads For Platforms That Generate Deepfake Pornography.”
Beginning May 30, Google won’t allow platforms that create deepfake porn, explain how to make it, or promote/compare services to place ads through the Google Ads system. Google already has an Inappropriate Content Policy in place. It prohibits the promotion of hate groups, self-harm, violence, conspiracy theories, and sharing explicit images to garner attention. The policy also bans advertising sex work and sexual abuse.
Violating the content policy results in a ban from Google Ads. Google is preparing for future problems as AI becomes better:
“The addition of deepfake pornography to the Inappropriate Content Policy is undoubtedly the result of increasingly accessible and adept generative AI. In 2022, Google banned deepfake training on Colab, its mostly free public computing resource. Even six years ago, Pornhub and Reddit had to go out of their way to ban AI-generated pornography, which often depicts real people (especially celebrities) engaging in sexual acts they didn’t perform or didn’t consent to recording. Whether we’d like to or not, most of us know just how much better AI has gotten at creating fake faces since then. If deepfake pornography looked a bit janky back in 2018, it’s bound to look a heck of a lot more realistic now.”
If it weren’t for the moral center of humanity, Google’s minions would allow lead material and other illicit content on Google Ads. Porn sells. It always has.
Whitney Grace, May 24, 2024
Googzilla Makes a Move in a High Stakes Contest
May 22, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
The trusted “real news” outfit Thomson Reuters published this popular news story about dancing with Googzilla. The article is titled by the click seekers as “Google Cuts Mystery Check to US in Bid to Sidestep Jury Trial.” I love the “mystery check.” I thought FinCEN was on the look out for certain types of transactions.
The contest is afoot. Thanks, MSFT Copilot.
Here’s the core of the story: On one side of the multi-dimensional Go board is the US Department of Justice. Yes, that was the department with the statues in the area where employees once were paid each week. On the other side of the game board is Googzilla. This is the digital construct which personifies the Alphabet, Google, YouTube, DeepMind, et al outfit. Some in Google’s senior management are avid game players. After all, one must set up a system in which no matter who plays a Googzilla-branded game, the “just average wizards” who run the company wins. The mindset has worked wonders in the online advertising and SEO sector. The SEO “experts” were the people who made a case to their clients for the truism “If you want traffic, it is a pay-to-play operation.” The same may be said for YouTube and content creators who make content so Google can monetize that digital flow and pay a sometimes unknown amount to a creator who is a one-person 1930s motion picture production company. Ditto for the advertisers who use the Google system to buy advertising and benefit by providing advertising space. What’s Google do? It makes the software that controls the game.
Where’s this going? Google is playing a game with the Department of Justice. I am certain some in the DoJ understand this approach. Others may not grasp the concept of Googzilla’s absolute addiction to gaming and gamesmanship. Casinos are supposed to make money. There are exceptions, of course. I can think of a high-profile case history of casino failure, but Google is a reasonably competent casino operator. Sure, there are some technical problems when the Cloud back end fails and the staff become a news event because they protest with correctly spelled signage. But overall, I would suggest that the depth of Googzilla’s game playing is not appreciated by its users, its competition, or some of the governments trying to regain data and control of information pumped into the creatures financial blood bank.
Let’s look at the information the trusted outfit sought to share as bait for a begging-for-dollars marketing play:
Google has preemptively paid damages to the U.S. government, an unusual move aimed at avoiding a jury trial in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit over its digital advertising business. Google disclosed the payment, but not the amount, in a court filing last week that said the case should be heard and decided by a judge directly. Without a monetary damages claim, Google argued, the government has no right to a jury trial.
That’s the move. The DoJ now has to [a] ignore the payment and move forward to a trial with a jury deciding if Googzilla is a “real” monopoly or a plain vanilla, everyday business like the ones Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft have helped go out of business. [b] Cash the check and go back to scanning US government job listings for a positive lateral arabesque on a quest to the SES (senior executive service). [c] Keep the check and pile on more legal pressure because the money was an inducement, not a replacement for the US justice system. With an election coming up, I can see option [d] on the horizon: Do nothing.
The idea is that in multi-dimensional Go, Google wants to eliminate the noise of legal disputes. Google wins if the government cashes the check. Google wins if the on-rushing election causes a slow down of an already slow process. Google wins if the DoJ keeps piling on the pressure. Google has the money and lawyers to litigate. The government has a long memory but that staff and leadership turnover shifts the odds to Googzilla. Google Calendar keeps its attorneys filing before deadlines and exploiting the US legal system to its fullest extent. If the US government sues Google because the check was a bribe, Google wins. The legal matter shifts to resolving the question about the bribe because carts rarely are put in front of horses.
In this Googzilla-influenced games, Googzilla has created options and set the stage to apply the same tactic to other legal battles. The EU may pass a law prohibiting pre-payment in lieu of a legal process, but if that does not move along at the pace of AI hyperbole, Google’s DoJ game plan can be applied to the lucky officials in Brussels and Strasbourg.
The Reuters’ report says:
Stanford Law School’s Mark Lemley told Reuters he was skeptical Google’s gambit would prevail. He said a jury could ultimately decide higher damages than whatever Google put forward.
“Antitrust cases regularly go to juries. I think it is a sign that Google is worried about what a jury will do,” Lemley said. Another legal scholar, Herbert Hovenkamp of the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, called Google’s move "smart" in a post on X. “Juries are bad at deciding technical cases, and further they do not have the authority to order a breakup,” he wrote.
Okay, two different opinions. The Google check is proactive.
Why? Here are some reasons my research group offered this morning:
- Google has other things to do with its legal resources; namely, deal with the copyright litigation which is knocking on its door
- The competitive environment is troubling so Googzilla wants to delete annoyances like the DoJ and staff who don’t meet the new profile of the ideal Googler any longer
- Google wants to set a precedent so it can implement its pay-to-play game plan for legal hassles.
I am 99 percent confident that Google is playing a game. I am not sure that others perceive the monopoly litigation as one. Googzilla has been refining its game plan, its game-playing skills, and its gaming business systems for 25 years. How long has the current crop of DoJ experts been playing Googley games? I am not going to bet against Googzilla. Remember what happened in the 2021 film Godzilla vs. Kong. Both beasties make peace and go their separate ways. If that happens, Googzilla wins.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2024
Google Dings MSFT: Marketing Motivated by Opportunism
May 21, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
While not as exciting as Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson, but the dust up is interesting. The developments leading up to this report about Google criticizing Microsoft’s security methods have a bit of history:
- Microsoft embraced OpenAI, Mistral, and other smart software because regulators are in meetings about regulating
- Google learned that after tire kicking, Apple found OpenAI (Microsoft’s pal) more suitable to the now innovation challenged iPhone. Google became a wallflower, a cute one, but a wallflower nevertheless
- Google faces trouble on three fronts: [a] Its own management of technology and its human resources; [b] threats to its online advertising and brokering business; and [c] challenges in cost control. (Employees get fired, and CFOs leave for a reason.)
Google is not a marketing outfit nor is it one that automatically evokes images associated with trust, data privacy, and people sensitivity. Google seized an opportunity to improve Web search. When forced to monetize, the company found inspiration in the online advertising “pay to play” ideas of Yahoo (Overture and GoTo). There was a legal dust up and Google paid up for that Eureka! moment. Then Google rode the demand for matching ads to queries. After 25 years, Google remains dependent on its semi-automated ad business. Now that business must be supplemented with enterprise cloud revenue.
Two white collar victims of legal witch hunts discuss “trust”. Good enough, MSFT Copilot.
How does the company market while the Red Alert klaxon blares into the cubicles, Google Meet sessions, and the Foosball game areas.?
The information in “Google Attacks Microsoft Cyber Failures in Effort to Steal Customers.” I wonder if Foundem and the French taxation authority might find the Google bandying about the word “steal”? I don’t know the answer to this question. The title indicates that Microsoft’s security woes, recently publicized by the US government, provide a marketing opportunity.
The article reports Google’s grand idea this way:
Government agencies that switch 500 or more users to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus for three years will get one year free and be eligible for a “significant discount” for the rest of the contract, said Andy Wen, the senior director of product management for Workspace. The Alphabet Inc. division is offering 18 months free to corporate customers that sign a three-year contract, a hefty discount after that and incident response services from Google’s Mandiant security business. All customers will receive free consulting services to help them make the switch.
The idea that Google is marketing is an interesting one. Like Telegram, Google has not been a long-time advocate of Madison Avenue advertising, marketing, and salesmanship. I was once retained by a US government agency to make a phone call to one of my “interaction points” at Google so that the director of the agency could ask a question about the quite pricey row of yellow Google Search Appliances. I made the call and obtained the required information. I also got paid. That’s some marketing in my opinion. An old person from rural Kentucky intermediating between a senior government official and a manager in one of Google’s mind boggling puzzle palace.
I want to point out that Google’s assertions about security may be overstated. One recent example is the Register’s report “Google Cloud Shows It Can Break Things for Lots of Customers – Not Just One at a Time.” Is this a security issue? My hunch is that whenever something breaks, security becomes an issue. Why? Rushed fixes may introduce additional vulnerabilities on top of the “good enough” engineering approach implemented by many high-flying, boastful, high-technology outfits. The Register says:
In the week after its astounding deletion of Australian pension fund UniSuper’s entire account, you might think Google Cloud would be on its very best behavior. Nope.
So what? When one operates at Google scale, the “what” is little more than users of 33 Google Cloud services were needful of some of that YouTube TV Zen moment stuff.
My reaction is that these giant outfits which are making clear that single points of failure are the norm in today’s online environment may not do the “fail over” or “graceful recovery” processes with the elegance of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s tuning point solo move. Google is obviously still struggling with the after effects of Microsoft’s OpenAI announcement and the flops like the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show in Paris and the “smart software” producing images orthogonal to historical fact.
Online advertising expertise may not correlate with marketing finesse.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2024
Allegations about Medical Misinformation Haunt US Tech Giants
May 17, 2024
Access to legal and safe abortions also known as the fight for reproductive rights are controversial issues in the United States and countries with large Christian populations. Opposition against abortions often spread false information about the procedure. They’re also known to spread misinformation about sex education, especially birth control. Mashable shares the unfortunate story that tech giants “Meta And Google Fuel Abortion Misinformation Across Africa, Asia, And Latin America, Report Finds.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and MSI Reproductive Choices (MSI) released a new report that found Meta and sometimes Google restricted abortion information and disseminated misinformation and abuse in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Abortion providers are prevented placing ads globally on Google and Meta. Meta also earns revenue from anti-abortion ads bought in the US and targeted at the aforementioned areas.
MSI claims in the report that Meta removed or rejected its ads in Vietnam, Nigeria, Nepal, Mexica, Kenya, and Ghana because of “sensitive content.” Meta also has a blanket advertising restrictions on MSI’s teams in Vietnam and Nepal without explanation. Google blocked ads with the keyword “pregnancy options” in Ghana and MSI claimed they were banned from using that term in a Google Adwords campaign.
Google offered an explanation:
“Speaking to Mashable, Google representative Michael Aciman said, ‘This report does not include a single example of policy violating content on Google’s platform, nor any examples of inconsistent enforcement. Without evidence, it claims that some ads were blocked in Ghana for referencing ‘pregnancy options’. To be clear, these types of ads are not prohibited from running in Ghana – if the ads were restricted, it was likely due to our longstanding policies against targeting people based on sensitive health categories, which includes pregnancy.’”
Google and Meta have been vague and inconsistent about why they’re removing pregnancy option ads, while allowing pro-life groups the spread unchecked misinformation about abortion. Meta, Google, and other social media companies mine user information, but they do scant to protect civil liberties and human rights.
Organizations like MSI and CCDH are doing what they can to fight bad actors. It’s an uphill battle and it would be easier if social media companies helped.
Whitney Grace, May 17, 2024
Ho Hum: The Search Sky Is Falling
May 15, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
“Google’s Broken Link to the Web” is interesting for two reasons: [a] The sky is falling — again and [b] search has been broken for a long time and suddenly I should worry.
The write up states:
When it comes to the company’s core search engine, however, the image of progress looks far muddier. Like its much-smaller rivals, Google’s idea for the future of search is to deliver ever more answers within its walled garden, collapsing projects that would once have required a host of visits to individual web pages into a single answer delivered within Google itself.
Nope. The walled garden has been in the game plan for a long, long time. People who lusted for Google mouse pads were not sufficiently clued in to notice. Google wants to be the digital Hotel California. Smarter software is just one more component available to the system which controls information flows globally. How many people in Denmark rely on Google search whether it is good, bad, or indifferent? The answer is, “99 percent.” What about people who let Google Gmail pass along their messages? How about 67 percent in the US. YouTube is video in many countries even with the rise of TikTok, the Google is hanging in there. Maps? Ditto. Calendars? Ditto. Each of these ubiquitous services are “search.” They have been for years. Any click can be monetized one way or another.
Who will pay attention to this message? Regulators? Users of search on an iPhone? How about commuters and Waze? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough. Working on those security issues today?
Now the sky is falling? Give me a break. The write up adds:
where the company once limited itself to gathering low-hanging fruit along the lines of “what time is the super bowl,” on Tuesday executives showcased generative AI tools that will someday plan an entire anniversary dinner, or cross-country-move, or trip abroad. A quarter-century into its existence, a company that once proudly served as an entry point to a web that it nourished with traffic and advertising revenue has begun to abstract that all away into an input for its large language models. This new approach is captured elegantly in a slogan that appeared several times during Tuesday’s keynote: let Google do the Googling for you.
Of course, if Google does it, those “search” abstractions can be monetized.
How about this statement?
But to everyone who depended even a little bit on web search to have their business discovered, or their blog post read, or their journalism funded, the arrival of AI search bodes ill for the future. Google will now do the Googling for you, and everyone who benefited from humans doing the Googling will very soon need to come up with a Plan B.
Okay, what’s the plan B? Kagi? Yandex? Something magical from one of the AI start ups?
People have been trying to out search Google for a quarter century. And what has been the result? Google’s technology has been baked into the findability fruit cakes.
If one wants to be found, buy Google advertising. The alternative is what exactly? Crazy SEO baloney? Hire a 15 year old and pray that person can become an influencer? Put ads on Tubi?
The sky is not falling. The clouds rolled in and obfuscated people’s ability to see how weaponized information has seized control of multiple channels of information. I don’t see a change in weather any time soon. If one wants to run around saying the sky is falling, be careful. One might run into a wall or trip over a fire plug.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2024
Google Lessons in Management: Motivating Some, Demotivating Others
May 14, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I spotted an interesting comment in “Google Workers Complain of Decline in Morale’ as CEO Sundar Pichai Grilled over Raises, Layoffs: Increased distrust.” Here’s the passage:
Last month, the company fired 200 more workers, aside from the roughly 50 staffers involved in the protests, and shifted jobs abroad to Mexico and India.
I paired this Xhitter item with “Google Employees Question Execs over Decline in Morale after Blowout Earnings.” That write up asserted:
At an all-hands meeting last week, Google employees questioned leadership about cost cuts, layoffs and “morale” issues following the company’s better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report. CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat said the company will likely have fewer layoffs in the second half of 2024.
Poor, poor Googzilla. I think the fearsome alleged monopolist could lose a few pounds. What do you think? Thanks, MSFT Copilot good enough work just like some security models we know and love.
Not no layoffs. Just “fewer layoffs.” Okay, that a motivator.
The estimable “real” news service stated:
Alphabet’s top leadership has been on the defensive for the past few years, as vocal staffers have railed about post-pandemic return-to-office mandates, the company’s cloud contracts with the military, fewer perks and an extended stretch of layoffs — totaling more than 12,000 last year — along with other cost cuts that began when the economy turned in 2022. Employees have also complained about a lack of trust and demands that they work on tighter deadlines with fewer resources and diminished opportunities for internal advancement.
What’s wrong with this management method? The answer: Absolutely nothing. The write up included this bit of information:
She [Ruth Porat, Google CFO, who is quitting the volleyball and foosball facility] also took the rare step of admitting to leadership’s mistakes in its prior handling of investments. “The problem is a couple of years ago — two years ago, to be precise — we actually got that upside down and expenses started growing faster than revenues,” said Porat, who announced nearly a year ago [in 2023] that she would be stepping down from the CFO position but hasn’t yet vacated the office. “The problem with that is it’s not sustainable.”
Ever tactful, Sundar Pichai (the straight man in the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Team is quoted as saying in silky tones:
“I think you almost set the record for the longest TGIF answer,” he said. Google all-hands meetings were originally called TGIFs because they took place on Fridays, but now they can occur on other days of the week. Pichai then joked that leadership should hold a “Finance 101” Ted Talk for employees. With respect to the decline in morale brought up by employees, Pichai said “leadership has a lot of responsibility here, adding that “it’s an iterative process.”
That’s a demonstration of tactful high school science club management-speak, in my opinion. To emphasize the future opportunities for the world’s smartest people, he allegedly said, according to the write up:
Pichai said the company is “working through a long period of transition as a company” which includes cutting expenses and “driving efficiencies.” Regarding the latter point, he said, “We want to do this forever.” [Editor note: Emphasis added]
Forever is a long, long time, isn’t it?
Poor, addled Googzilla. Litigation to the left, litigation to the right. Grousing world’s smartest employees. A legacy of baby making in the legal department. Apple apparently falling in lust with OpenAI. Amazon and its pesky Yellow Pages approach to advertising.
The sky is not falling, but there are some dark clouds overhead. And, speaking of overhead, is Google ever going to be able to control its costs, pay off its technical debt, write checks to the governments when the firm is unjustly found guilty of assorted transgressions?
For now, yes. Forever? Sure, why not?
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2024
Will Google Behave Like Telegram?
May 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I posted a short item on LinkedIn about Telegram’s blocking of Ukraine’s information piped into Russia via Telegram. I pointed out that Pavel Durov, the founder of VK and Telegram, told Tucker Carlson that he was into “free speech.” A few weeks after the interview, Telegram blocked the data from Ukraine for Russia’s Telegram users. One reason given, as I recall, was that Apple was unhappy. Telegram rolled over and complied with a request that seems to benefit Russia more than Apple. But that’s just my opinion. The incident, which one of my team verified with a Ukrainian interacting with senior professionals in Ukraine, the block. Not surprisingly, Ukraine’s use of Telegram is under advisement. I think that means, “Find another method of sending encrypted messages and use that.” Compromised communications can translate to “Rest in Peace” in real time.
A Hong Kong rock band plays a cover of the popular hit Glory to Hong Kong. The bats in the sky are similar to those consumed in Shanghai during a bat festival. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. What are you working on today? Security or AI?
I read “Hong Kong Puts Google in Hot Seat With Ban on Protest Song.” That news story states:
The Court of Appeal on Wednesday approved the government’s application for an injunction order to prevent anyone from playing Glory to Hong Kong with seditious intent. While the city has a new security law to punish that crime, the judgment shifted responsibility onto the platforms, adding a new danger that just hosting the track could expose companies to legal risks. In granting the injunction, judges said prosecuting individual offenders wasn’t enough to tackle the “acute criminal problems.”
What’s Google got to do with it that toe tapper Glory to Hong Kong?
The write up says:
The injunction “places Google, media platforms and other social media companies in a difficult position: Essentially pitting values such as free speech in direct conflict with legal obligations,” said Ryan Neelam, program director at the Lowy Institute and former Australian diplomat to Hong Kong and Macau. “It will further the broader chilling effect if foreign tech majors do comply.”
The question is, “Roll over as Telegram allegedly has, or fight Hong Kong and by extension everyone’s favorite streaming video influencer, China?” What will Google do? Scrub Glory to Hong Kong, number one with a bullet on someone’s hit parade I assume.
My guess is that Google will go to court, appeal, and then take appropriate action to preserve whatever revenue is at stake. I do know The Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show will not use Glory to Hong Kong as its theme for its 2024 review.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2024
Google Search Is Broken
May 10, 2024
ChatGPT and other generative AI engines have screwed up search engines, including the all-powerful Google. The Blaze article, “Why Google Search Is Broken” explains why Internet search is broke, and the causes. The Internet is full of information and the best way to get noticed in search results is using SEO. A black hat technique (it will probably be considered old school in the near future) to manipulate search results is to litter a post with keywords aka “keyword stuffing.”
ChatGPT users realized that it’s a fantastic tool for SEO, because they tell the AI algorithm to draft a post with a specific keyword and it generates a decent one. Google’s search algorithm then reads that post and pushes it to the top of search results. ChatGPT was designed to read and learn language the same way as Google: skin the Internet, scoop up information from Web sites, and then use it to teach the algorithm. This threatens Google’s search profit margins and Alphabet Inc. doesn’t like that:
“By and large, people don’t want to read AI-generated content, no matter how accurate it is. But the trouble for Google is that it can’t reliably detect and filter AI-generated content. I’ve used several AI detection apps, and they are 50% accurate at best. Google’s brain trust can probably do a much better job, but even then, it’s computationally expensive, and even the mighty Google can’t analyze every single page on the web, so the company must find workarounds.
This past fall, Google rolled out its Helpful Content Update, in which Google started to strongly emphasize sites based on user-generated content in search results, such as forums. The site that received the most notable boost in search rankings was Reddit. Meanwhile, many independent bloggers saw their traffic crash, whether or not they used AI.”
Google wants to save money by offloading AI detection/monitoring to forum moderators that usually aren’t paid. Unfortunately SEO experts figured out Google’s new trick and are now spamming user-content driven Websites. Google recently signed a deal with Reddit to acquire its user data to train its AI project, Gemini.
Google hates AI generated SEO and people who game its search algorithms. Google doesn’t have the resources to detect all the SEO experts, but went they are found Google extracts vengeance with deindexing and making better tools. Google released a new update to its spam policies to remove low-quality, unoriginal content made to abuse its search algorithm. The overall goal is to remove AI-generated sites from search results.
If you read between the lines, Google doesn’t want to lose more revenue and is calling out bad actors.
Whitney Grace, May 10, 2024
Google Trial: An Interesting Comment Amid the Yada Yada
May 8, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I read “Google’s Antitrust Trial Spotlights Search Ads on the Final Day of Closing Arguments.” After decades of just collecting Google tchotchkes, US regulators appear to be making some progress. It is very difficult to determine if a company is a monopoly. It was much easier to count barrels of oil, billets of steel, and railroad cars than digital nothingness, wasn’t it?
A giant whose name is Googzilla has most of the toys. He is reminding those who want the toys about his true nature. I believe Googzilla. Do you? Thanks, Microsoft Copilot. Good enough.
One of the many reports of the Google monopoly legal activity finally provided to me a quite useful, clear statement. Here’s the passage which caught my eye:
a coalition of state attorneys said Google’s search advertising business has trapped advertisers into its ecosystem while higher ad prices haven’t led to higher returns.
I want to consider this assertion. Please, read the original write up on Digiday to get the “real” news report. I am not a journalist; I am a dinobaby, and I have some thoughts to capture.
First, the Google has been doing Googley things for about a quarter of a century. A bit longer if one counts the Backrub service in an estimable Stanford computer building. From my point of view, Google has been doing “clever.” That means to just apologize, not ask permission. That means seek inspiration from others; for example, the IBM Clever system, the Yahoo-Overture advertising system, and the use of free to gain access to certain content like books, and pretty much doing what it wants. After figuring out that Google had to make money, it “innovated” with advertising, paid a fine, and acquired people and technology to match ads to queries. Yep, Oingo (Applied Semantics) helped out. The current antitrust matter will be winding down in 2024 and probably drag through 2025. Appeals for a company with lots of money can go slowly. Meanwhile Google’s activity can go faster.
Second, the data about Google monopoly are not difficult to identify. There is the state of the search market. Well, Eric Schmidt said years ago, Qwant kept him awake at night. I am not sure that was a credible statement. If Mr. Schmidt were awake at night, it might be the result of thinking about serious matters like money. His money. When Google became widely available, there were other Web search engines. I posted a list on my Web site which had a couple of hundred entries. Now the hot new search engines just recycle Bing and open source indexes, tossing in a handful of “special” sources like my mother jazzing up potato salad. There is Google search. And because of the reach of Google search, Google can sell ads.
Third, the ads are not just for search. Any click on a Google service is a click. Due to cute tricks like Chrome and ubiquitous services like maps, Google can slap ads many place. Other outfits cannot unless they are Google “partners.” Those partners are Google’s sales force. SEO customers become buyers of Google ads because that’s the most effective way to get traffic. Does a small business owner expect a Web site to be “found” without Google Local and maybe some advertising juice. Nope. No one but OSINT experts can get Google search to deliver useful results. Google Dorks exists for a reason. Google search quality drives ad sales. And YouTube ads? Lots of ads. Want an alternative? Good luck with Facebook, TikTok, ok.ru, or some other service.
Where’s the trial now? Google has asserted that it does not understand its own technology. The judge says he is circling down the drain of the marketing funnel. But the US government depends on the Google. That may be a factor or just the shadow of Googzilla.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2024
Google Stomps into the Threat Intelligence Sector: AI and More
May 7, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Before commenting on Google’s threat services news. I want to remind you of the link to the list of Google initiatives which did not survive. You can find the list at Killed by Google. I want to mention this resource because Google’s product innovation and management methods are interesting to say the least. Operating in Code Red or Yellow Alert or whatever the Google crisis buzzword is, generating sustainable revenue beyond online advertising has proven to be a bit of a challenge. Google is more comfortable using such methods as [a] buying and trying to scale it, [b] imitating another firm’s innovation, and [c] dumping big money into secret projects in the hopes that what comes out will not result in the firm’s getting its “glass” kicked to the curb.
Google makes a big entrance at the RSA Conference. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Have you considerate purchasing Google’s threat intelligence service?
With that as background, Google has introduced an “unmatched” cyber security service. The information was described at the RSA security conference and in a quite Googley blog post “Introducing Google Threat Intelligence: Actionable threat intelligence at Google Scale.” Please, note the operative word “scale.” If the service does not make money, Google will “not put wood behind” the effort. People won’t work on the project, and it will be left to dangle in the wind or just shot like Cricket, a now famous example of animal husbandry. (Google’s Cricket was the Google Appliance. Remember that? Take over the enterprise search market. Nope. Bang, hasta la vista.)
Google’s new service aims squarely at the comparatively well-established and now maturing cyber security market. I have to check to see who owns what. Venture firms and others with money have been buying promising cyber security firms. Google owned a piece of Recorded Future. Now Recorded Future is owned by a third party outfit called Insight. Darktrace has been or will be purchased by Thoma Bravo. Consolidation is underway. Thus, it makes sense to Google to enter the threat intelligence market, using its Mandiant unit as a springboard, one of those home diving boards, not the cliff in Acapulco diving platform.
The write up says:
we are announcing Google Threat Intelligence, a new offering that combines the unmatched depth of our Mandiant frontline expertise, the global reach of the VirusTotal community, and the breadth of visibility only Google can deliver, based on billions of signals across devices and emails. Google Threat Intelligence includes Gemini in Threat Intelligence, our AI-powered agent that provides conversational search across our vast repository of threat intelligence, enabling customers to gain insights and protect themselves from threats faster than ever before.
Google to its credit did not trot out the “quantum supremacy” lingo, but the marketers did assert that the service offers “unmatched visibility in threats.” I like the “unmatched.” Not supreme, just unmatched. The graphic below illustrates the elements of the unmatchedness:
Credit to the Google 2024
But where is artificial intelligence in the diagram? Don’t worry. The blog explains that Gemini (Google’s AI “system”) delivers
AI-driven operationalization
But the foundation of the new service is Gemini, which does not appear in the diagram. That does not matter, the Code Red crowd explains:
Gemini 1.5 Pro offers the world’s longest context window, with support for up to 1 million tokens. It can dramatically simplify the technical and labor-intensive process of reverse engineering malware — one of the most advanced malware-analysis techniques available to cybersecurity professionals. In fact, it was able to process the entire decompiled code of the malware file for WannaCry in a single pass, taking 34 seconds to deliver its analysis and identify the kill switch. We also offer a Gemini-driven entity extraction tool to automate data fusion and enrichment. It can automatically crawl the web for relevant open source intelligence (OSINT), and classify online industry threat reporting. It then converts this information to knowledge collections, with corresponding hunting and response packs pulled from motivations, targets, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), actors, toolkits, and Indicators of Compromise (IoCs). Google Threat Intelligence can distill more than a decade of threat reports to produce comprehensive, custom summaries in seconds.
I like the “indicators of compromise.”
Several observations:
- Will this service be another Google Appliance-type play for the enterprise market? It is too soon to tell, but with the pressure mounting from regulators, staff management issues, competitors, and savvy marketers in Redmond “indicators” of success will be known in the next six to 12 months
- Is this a business or just another item on a punch list? The answer to the question may be provided by what the established players in the threat intelligence market do and what actions Amazon and Microsoft take. Is a new round of big money acquisitions going to begin?
- Will enterprise customers “just buy Google”? Chief security officers have demonstrated that buying multiple security systems is a “safe” approach to a job which is difficult: Protecting their employers from deeply flawed software and years of ignoring online security.
Net net: In a maturing market, three factors may signal how the big, new Google service will develop. These are [a] price, [b] perceived efficacy, and [c] avoidance of a major issue like the SolarWinds’ matter. I am rooting for Googzilla, but I still wonder why Google shifted from Recorded Future to acquisitions and me-too methods. Oh, well. I am a dinobaby and cannot be expected to understand.
Stephen E Arnold, May 7, 2024
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