Google: Feeling the Competitive Heat
February 28, 2020
Google, DarkCyber assumes, thought that Microsoft’s decision to convert the Chrome browser into Credge was a victory. “Google Is Now Warning Millions Of Microsoft Edge Users To Switch To Chrome: Here’s Why” tries to explain Googley thinking.
We learn from the capitalist tool:
Google has been found “abusing user agents,” the identifying code that enables websites to identify the browser type and version, to detect and warn Microsoft Edge users visiting the Chrome web store that when it comes to extensions they should switch to Chrome. The reason for the warning is that Microsoft Edge doesn’t integrate with the Safe Browsing protections Google uses to remove threats—so when an extension presents a risk, Google can’t act in the same way to protect users.
Is this the only reason?
DarkCyber thinks a bit of context will explain some of the Googley thinking.
Consider Google and Amazon.
Google does not like Amazon, especially when Amazon stepped away from solely being a retailer to offering software services to customers. Google wants some of Amazon’s cloud business, so they are telling retailers to chuck Amazon and check out their tools. ZDNet rolls out the gossip in the article, “Google’s Pitch To Retailers: We’ll Help You, From Search To Supply Chain.”
At the National Retail Federation, Google introduced retailers to a new line of tools available via its cloud. The tools range from product discovery, supply chain optimization, and hybrid application management. Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud CEO, explained that the retailers who innovate with their business plans are the most successful. Google wants to grab these forward thinking retailers with new tools like:
“Among the new offerings for retailers is a new tool called Google Cloud Search for Retail, which Google is piloting now and will introduce to the broader market throughout the year. The tool helps retailers improve search results for their own websites and mobile apps using cloud AI and Google Search algorithms.
Kurian’s blog post also served as a reminder to retailers that they can buy Google Ads to surface their products when customers use Google’s many consumer tools like Search, YouTube, Shopping, Google Assistant or Maps.
We noted:
Google also announced Google Cloud 1:1 Engagement for Retail, a set of best practices that can help retailers build data-driven strategies for personalized customer services. This should make it easier for customers to use Google’s BigQuery data analytics platform to build personalization and recommendation models.
That is just the beginning! Google is also developing a Buy Optimization and Demand Forecasting service that assisted retailers plan and manage supply changes. There is also a new retail version of Anthos, Google’s platform for managing services on site or the cloud environment. It will allow retailers to roll our and manage applications across all stores.
What happens if we try to add 1 + 1. DarkCyber thinks that the task reveals several facets of Googley thinking:
- Microsoft has lots of Windows 10 users who just use Credge. The browser works, is there, and why hunt for a different way to look at Web pages. But what if Credge gets traction on a mobile phone? What if Microsoft, the long time drone target of the Google, gets eyeballs on Android devices? Yep, those victory cheers are likely to become verbal and physical tics.
- Amazon is selling ads. Selling lots of ads is not good for the Google, a company for more than 20 years has had one revenue stream of significance. The Google wants to put some sand in the fuel tank of Bezos bulldozer. Thus, Googley behavior dictates action.
- Google itself faces a problem few companies have: Indexing the Web and changes to Web pages is expensive. How does one cut costs when Microsoft may blindly wreck havoc in the browser revenue flow or put a dent in the quite robust mobile ad business? How does Google protect existing ad revenue and possibly cause the Bezos bulldozer to go down for an engine overhaul? Aggressive actions seems to be the order of the day.
If DarkCyber steps back or in the lingo of a University of Chicago philosopher “go up a meta lever”, the actions of today’s Googlers reflect some changes which may give pause. Marketing has never been a Googley strength. Now it has to be competitive marketing. Is Google’s marketing elegant? Yeah, not too elegant.
Can Google control costs without further compromising its search service, its wonky innovations, and its increasingly contentious employee-management interactions?
DarkCyber finds the Credge and Bezos bulldozer “plays” interesting and entertaining.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2020
Microsoft: More Excitement from the Outfit Which Ships Wonky Windows 10 Updates
February 24, 2020
China is worrisome, because the country keeps quiet and is quick to cover up anything that projects a negative light. Other facts about China include that it loves foreign money and advanced technology. The technology bit becomes worrisome, especially with a recent report from Tom’s Hardware: “Report: Microsoft Shared Cortana, Skype Recordings In China With Few Protections.” Like every large company, Microsoft wants Chinese dollars, so the company shared recordings from digital assistants to train the speech recognition with contractors. The Guardian reported that Microsoft shared these recordings with China minus security safeguards.
The source came from a former Microsoft contractor who listened to the recordings on his personal laptop. Microsoft apparently emailed URLs, emails, and passwords to contractors to access Cortana and Skype recordings. If they are only recordings used to train speech recognition, why is this alarming? All of China’s Internet traffic is filtered through a government blockade. So all of Microsoft’s Skype and Cortana recordings were inadvertently accessed by the Chinese government. But…
“But it gets worse. The Guardian reported that Microsoft generated the usernames and passwords used to access this system. The usernames were said to follow “a simple schema,” which suggests they would have been fairly easy to guess, and the password was “the same for every employee who joined in any given year.” Contractors were allowed to work from home, too, without direct supervision.”
Some people can figure out how to abuse brilliantly crafted systems, but wonky stuff. Hasta la vista, data. Microsoft released a press release that stated the recordings were fewer than ten words, no one had access to longer conversations, they always observe the highest privacy standards, and they have updated their privacy standards. In other words, Microsoft failed and Chinese contractors outsmarted their system.
Microsoft and other companies working with Chinese contractors and other foreign entities can do better to protect sensitive material. Now about those Windows 10 updates.
Whitney Grace, February 24, 2020
Twitch: A Big, Juicy Target
February 16, 2020
Videogame streamers are some of the Internet’s most popular celebrities and most people have never heard about them. PewDiePie is the reigning streaming king and YouTube is his domain, but dozens of other gamers vie for his throne from the land of Twitch. The San Francisco Gate examines the streaming craze and how tech corporations are trying to hone in on the profits, “Game On: Tech Giants Vs. The Kind Of Streaming.”
Both Facebook and Microsoft have attempted to snag a piece of the streaming profit pie, but nothing rivals Twitch. Twitch started as a startup in San Francisco that Amazon purchased for $1 billion in 2014. Twitch now controls 76% of video game streaming on Europe, North America, and South America. While most people are not aware of the popularity of video game streaming, it is an importance facet in the $180 billion gaming industry and it makes more money than movies and music.
Microsoft is eager to take on Twitch and the company hired one of Twitch’s biggest streamers, Tyler Blevins aka Ninja for an undisclosed amount of amount. Microsoft wants Blevins to promote its streaming service Mixer, but he did little to raise Mixer’s users in 2019. Mixer only accounts for 3.2% of the streaming market, while Twitch continues to grow. Hiring Blevins was not enough for Microsoft, although it was a good move:
“Mixer has been growing steadily since it started, said Ben Decker, head of gaming services at Microsoft, and now has more than 30 million monthly active users. But to really compete with Twitch, which has reported that it has 140 million monthly users, Microsoft needs to do more than spend a few million dollars on a star streamer, said Doron Nir, chief executive of StreamElements. When it comes to having a streaming platform, this is a billion-dollar game,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot more from Mixer to really take away from the enormous audience that Twitch has.”
Nir said he didn’t believe the deal for Blevins was bad for Mixer. It still brought widespread media attention and put it in the conversation. And Microsoft was not discouraged, bringing over Michael Grzesiek, a professional gamer known as Shroud, and Cory Michael, a streamer who goes by King Gothalion, from Twitch.”
Other tech giants are attempting to steal some of Twitch’s success, but Twitch remains strong and will continue to dominant for the time being. There is room for streaming platforms like Mixer and other emerging rivals to join the market, but they will need to bring something new and unique like Twitch did.
Whitney Grace, February 16, 2020
The Clouds in UAE: Amazon Not Mentioned
February 13, 2020
Here’s the big reveal in the write up titled “Microsoft Sees Room for Growth Opportunities for All Cloud Providers in UAE.”
The US technology giant [Microsoft] offers three main clouds – Azure, Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics 365.
Three clouds. Well, Google has 10 chat apps. So much for efficiency, federation, and distributed architectures.
Other factoids in the write up, in DarkCyber’s opinion, are:
- The growth for Microsoft and “all” is PaaS or Platform as a Service.
- Competition is good, presumably among members of the oligopoly players in the “cloud”
- Alibaba has a cloud data center in the UAE
- The intelligent edge is a reality. What’s an intelligent edge? Hey, no need to explain this bit of verbal frippery.
- There are more than 1,000 technologies on Azure. Can anyone list these? DarkCyber cannot.
The write up does not mention the other outfit near Microsoft. But Amazon has some operations in the UAE, Bahrain, and other countries in the area as well.
The write up toots Microsoft’s tuba and Oracle’s flute.
Yep, useful marketing packaged as “real” analysis. But three “main clouds”?
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2020
Amazon: Some Trouble Down Under?
January 29, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Case Study: Why the Australian Electoral Commission Migrated to Microsoft Azure.” On the surface, the write up is another PR output. When considered in terms of the competition between Amazon and Microsoft for juicy non commercial jobs, the article provides a check list of what’s lacking in Amazon AWS. DarkCyber identified these “advantages” for the Redmond brain trust which finds questionable methods for altering a user’s Windows 7 machine amusing. (This black screen incident provides a reminder that PR check points may not match a firm’s actual behavior.)
Here are the upsides for Azure, presumably without a black screen on Luddites’ Windows 7 computers:
- Quick turn around
- Publicly exposed APIs
- API management tools
- API creation tools
- Real time information feeds
- Ability to create an “express route” for speedy data communications
- Zero failure
- Ability to support self service from users
- A customer or user service portal
- A much loved integrator.
What was the deciding factor? The much loved vendor it seems.
Does Amazon match up on these check points? Sure.
Marketing presentations are one thing. The much loved vendor is another.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2020
Irony, Outrage, Speculation: Amazon Rings the PR Gong
January 23, 2020
Remember the Gong Show? The host was an alleged government asset. The content of the show was humans performing. The focus was on humans who sang, dance, and cavorted in weird, sometimes incredible ways. The result? The host rang a gong. The performer, hooked by a big old person cane, found himself or herself dragged from the camera’s eye.
The elements of the program:
- Alleged government connections
- A ranking system for wild and crazy performances
- The big humiliation with the old person’s cane.
I thought of the Gong Show as I worked my way through dozens and dozens of write ups about the hacking of a mobile phone used by Jeff Bezos, the motive force of Amazon. You know Amazon: The online bookstore, the operator of the S3 leaking buckets, and policeware vendor.
The most interesting reports swirl around what Vice encapsulates in the article “Here Is the Technical Report Suggesting Saudi Arabia’s Prince Hacked Jeff Bezos’ Phone.” The report reveals
that forensic investigators found a suspicious file but no evidence of any malware on the phone.
Interesting, but not as fascinating as the assertions about who allegedly compromised Mr. Bezos’ mobile, when the alleged data sucking took place, and when the content was spirited away, how the compromise actually was implemented, and where those data went.
DarkCyber finds it interesting that fingers are pointed at countries, some government officials, Facebook’s always-interesting WhatsApp software, and at NSO Group, a company certain media outlets frequently reference. (NSO Group may be one of the specialized software vendors getting more publicity than Star Wars’ films.)
In our DarkCyber video news program, we devote almost two full minutes to the problems information technology managers face when implementing cyber security.
The Bezos Affair presents an opportunity to confront an unpleasant reality: Security is difficult.
The real time monitoring, the smart cyber defenses, the companies creating policeware, and the methods available to actors—each of these underscore how vulnerable individuals and organizations are.
The speculation, however, does little to make clear how protections can be achieved. In fact, the coverage of the Bezos Affair has reduced the coverage of what may be an even more egregious security lapse explained in “Microsoft Blames Itself for Customer Support Data Leak.” The “misconfiguration” error exposed 250 million customer records.
One gets the coverage, a world leader is implicated, an Israeli company is cast in a negative light. These are real time “real news” factoids. But the loss of 250 million customer records by Microsoft, the possible vendor for the US Department of Defense, is ignored.
Why are these problems commonplace? The answer, which we provide in our January 28, 2020, video, is provided. That answer is going to be a surprise. You can view the video program on the Beyond Search / DarkCyber blog by clicking the video promo image. No ads, no sponsors, no outside influencers, and no odd ball “You may also like.”
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2020
Amazon and Microsoft: Different Ways to Leverage $1 Billion
January 17, 2020
Author and big gun Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, allegedly wrote “Microsoft Will Be Carbon Negative by 2030.” To achieve this goal, the company will spend $1 billion dollars. Okay, that appears to work out to $8.3 million per month for 10 years. That’s about 11 Azure Cognitive S4 transactions. Impressive. I suppose it depends on one’s point of view. From the PR perspective, this is probably a decent billion. From other points of view, one’s mileage may vary.
Now contrast this Microsoft $1 billion with Amazon’s. Dark Cyber noted “During Bezos Visit, India minister Says Amazon’s $1 Billion Investment Is No Big Favour.” The write up states something that is a PR downer:
Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart are facing mounting criticism from India’s brick-and-mortar retailers, which accuse the U.S. giants of violating Indian law by racking up billions of dollars of losses to fund deep discounts and discriminating against small sellers. The companies deny the allegations.
Amazon’s reaction? Read on:
Bezos said on Wednesday [January 15, 2020] Amazon would invest $1 billion to bring small businesses online in the country, adding to the $5.5 billion the company had committed since 2014.
Stepping back, Microsoft is going for good ink. Amazon seems to be going after what may be the second or third largest market in the world for Amazon services and battery powered Ring doorbells.
Interesting uses of $1 billion.
Stephen E Arnold, January 17, 2020
Microsoft Matches the Amazon AWS Security Certification
December 21, 2019
DarkCyber wants to point out that the JEDI deal has not closed. But one of Microsoft’s weaknesses has been remediated. The news is probably not going to make Amazon’s AWS government professionals smile. In fact, the news could ruin the New Year for the Bezos bulldozer.
Stars and Stripes explained in “With New Pentagon IT Certification, Microsoft Narrows the Cloud Security Gap with Amazon” that:
on December 12 Microsoft became the second company to hold the Pentagon’s highest-level IT security certification, called Impact Level 6, Defense Information Systems Agency spokesman Russ Goemaere told The Washington Post in an email. The temporary certification lasts three months, after which a longer one will be considered, Goemaere said. The news of Microsoft’s certification was reported earlier by the Washington Business Journal. The certification means that, for the first time, Microsoft will be able to store classified data in the cloud. Defense and intelligence agencies typically use air-gapped, local computer networks to store sensitive data rather than the cloud-based systems that most companies now use to harness far-off data centers. Previously, Amazon was the only cloud provider trusted with secret data.
The Grinch may want to contact Amazon customer service and ask for an explanation. DarkCyber is not sure if certification is the same as “real” security, but checklists matter. When billions are at stake, one small item can have significant impact. For more detail, see “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” The book is just $9.00 on Amazon. The 1957 book is classified as inspirational and religious poetry.
Yep, categories are important too.
Stephen E Arnold, December 22, 2019
Azure Is Better at Hybrid Computing Because AWS Is an Orchid
December 12, 2019
There’s an interesting explanation of the DoD’s JEDI award in “Opinion: Microsoft Fairly and Squarely Beat Amazon in $10 Billion Pentagon Cloud Contract.” The reason is:
In 2017, Microsoft designed Azure Stack to meet hybrid cloud computing needs, a distinction from AWS, which was designed for cloud-only computing needs without the flexibility of leveraging on-premise servers. That has led Amazon to chase Microsoft with hybrid-cloud offerings such as AWS Outposts, which launched in November of 2018 — well after the Pentagon bid had been opened. As of the first half of 2019, Microsoft was the only company among the top three cloud providers that has a generally available hybrid cloud. Microsoft’s Windows operating system has run on servers for decades, and it was a natural extension to offer Azure Cloud to run on-premise. Microsoft’s hybrid strategy has resulted in 95% of Fortune 500 companies using Azure today. That is a staggering statistic, which shows the superiority of hybrid cloud compared with traditional cloud computing. As J.B. Hunt, one of Azure’s Fortune 500 customers, said: “Microsoft didn’t ask us to bend to their vision of a cloud.”
Amazon is unlikely to agree. Amazon’s lawyers definitely will view this explanation as insufficiently developed to justify dropping the lawsuit.
The problem is that “one throat to choke” seems like a great idea. But the reality is that there usually are many throats to choke regardless of who is the contract winner.
The idea of a common platform or framework, data harmonization, and smooth access control are easy to talk about.
Reality is a little more chaotic. Read the original write up and decide. Then consider how likely it is that a single individual or a small business has a single throat to choke when something goes wrong. Throat choking is preceded by finger pointing, and none of the technology giants deliver reliability, ease of use, and fantasy land solutions.
Reality. Messy. Azure is a hybrid. AWS is an orchid. Neither is guaranteed a long, healthy existence if the gardener forgets to water the plants, the insects decide to chow down, or a road grader grind ouy a new information highway.
Lawyers? Guaranteed money. Other parties? Not guaranteed much.
Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2019
Insight from a Microsoft Professional: Susan Dumais
December 1, 2019
Dr. Susan Dumais is Microsoft Technical Fellow and Deputy Lab Director of MSR AI. She knows that search has evolved from discovering information to getting tasks done. In order. To accomplish tasks, search queries are a fundamental and they are rooted in people’s information needs. The Microsoft Research Podcast interviewed Dr. Dumais in the episode, “HCI, IR, And The Search For Better Search With Dr. Susan Dumais.”
Dr. Dumais shared that most of her work centered around search stems from frustrations she encountered with her own life. These included trouble learning Unix OS and vast amounts of spam. At the beginning of the podcast, she runs down the history of search and how it has changed in the past twenty years. Search has become more intuitive, especially give the work Dr. Dumais did when providing context to search.
“Host: Context in anything makes a difference with language and this is integrally linked to the idea of personalization, which is a buzz word in almost every area of computer science research these days: how can we give people a “valet service” experience with their technical devices and systems? So, tell us about the technical approaches you’ve taken on context in search, and how they’ve enabled machines to better recognize or understand the rich contextual signals, as you call them, that can help humans improve their access to information?
Susan Dumais: If you take a step back and consider what a web search engine is, it’s incredibly difficult to understand what somebody is looking for given, typically, two to three words. These two to three words appear in a search box and what you try to do is match those words against billions of documents. That’s a really daunting challenge. That challenge becomes a little easier if you can understand things about where the query is coming from. It doesn’t fall from the sky, right? It’s issued by a real live human being. They have searched for things in the longer term, maybe more acutely in the current session. It’s situated in a particular location in time. All of those signals are what we call context that help understand why somebody might be searching and, more importantly, what you might do to help them, what they might mean by that. You know, again, it’s much easier to understand queries if you have a little bit of context about it.”
Dr. Dumais has a practical approach to making search work for the average user. It is the everyday tasks that build up that power how search is shaped and its functionality. She represents an enlightened technical expert that understands the perspective of the end user.
Whitney Grace, November 30, 2019
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