Did 2012 Mark the Beginning of the End for the Google?
February 24, 2020
A colleague sent me a link to “Google’s Best Days Are Behind Them.” I don’t have much hope for a write up with a grammatical error in the headline. The viewpoint is that of a search engine optimization professional. For a member of this elite and relevance destroying group, Google is good if it returns a specific Web page in response to a user’s query. In my experience, the query matters less than putting a particular page at the top of a first page of result. To achieve this, gamesmanship, deceptive practices, and social engineering are the norm.
The write up pegs 2012 as the beginning of the end of Google. I prefer to think of Google beginning a stroll toward sundowning, not death, and not for a long time. The write up asserts:
Google first started making major changes in its long-existing algorithm in 2012, when it came up with the Penguin update. With each subsequent algorithm update, the company focused on key areas like building links, improving content, or technical SEO aspects.
What’s happening is that SEO experts find themselves with less room to fiddle and fool Mother Google. In reality, Google has taken the fooling around into its own hands. The write up touches upon one example:
But recently, Google has started paying more attention to the way it displays its search results, i.e., the UI/UX. And this sole factor has cost multiple websites the entirety of their business, if not more.
Instead of a list, Google has experimented with making the pages into showcases, digital fruit salads, and odd mixes of content from its silos of indexes. But that disguised a core problem for the Google: The rise of the mobile phone and the shift from desktop search to small form factor search. The article identifies one consequence of this shift:
While Google had a 20% volume of advertisements on its SERPS before, Google-owned features now tend to occupy almost 80% of the page. In most search results, the first fold is completely taken over by features like Google ads, a Google Maps pack, or Google Shopping ads.
For the author, this means that getting a site to appear at the top of a results list is a difficult task. For certain types of content, the SEO efforts – usually a hit and miss effort – became outright failure.
The write up does point out that Google made more than 3,000 changes to its search algorithm in 2019. That’s sort of right. The plumbing is still in place at the Google. The fixes take place in the layers upon layers of wrappers which enhance search with the advertising revenue objective. What Google’s algorithm is now resembles a giant tar ball with leaves, sticks, plastic water bottles, and other detritus embedded in its surface. Changes require changes. Revenue objectives require changes. Users doing something Google did not predict requires changes. To make matters more interesting, the changes follow the sun; that is, search engineers make changes around the world, across time zones. DarkCyber is not sure there is a single person working at Google who knows what is generating a particular search result. That’s not going to change.
When did this situation begin? Was 2012 the Golden Year?
No. That’s like pinpointing the specific date of the Stone Age.
Google’s transformation began the day the Yahoo litigation was resolved. For those unaware that Google was accused of improper use of Yahoo owned systems and methods, you can get up to speed at this paywalled (of course) story in the New York Times by the ever sharp Saul Hansell: “Google and Yahoo Settle Dispute Over Search Patent.”
Search is expensive. Google’s approach to business is expensive. Google’s assumptions about Android advertising are expensive. In short, no matter how much money Google sucks in and carves out for profit there will never be enough. As a result, Google has to reduce costs and increase revenue.
The changes Google has been implementing since 2004 are not visible to even the least aware SEO professional. To those who have used Web search systems since before the inception of Google, the changes in the quality, timeliness, relevance, precision, and recall in Google search results have been deteriorating for — let’s do the math 2020 – 2004 = 16 years — yes, more than 15 years.
There’s nothing like an SEO expert who is on top of search, what’s been going on for 180 months.
DarkCyber’s key insight into search: Run those queries across available systems. Relying on one is going to produce results that may deceive, mislead, and disappoint.
That’s work. Yep, so is understanding that information retrieval is a serious business. Advertising is a money business. SEO is a deception business.
And Google is consistent and sundowning. No matter how flawed the service, it is a monopoly. Monopolies take a long time to go away.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 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
What Happens When MBAs Embrace Open Source?
February 24, 2020
Paul Stovell, founder of the open source product-deployment platform Octopus Deploy, explains in a blog post, “Why We Terminated Our Partnership with Microsoft—Re: Next Decade of Open Source.” Microsoft tends to adopt ideas from other projects and incorporate them into its behemoth software ecosystem. Not surprisingly, it does not make the effort to inform consumers where their ideas came from. In fact, such developments tend to eclipse the original product. We’re told:
“There’s a saying in business that if you want to displace a competitor, you need to build a product that’s at least 10x better. It’s not enough to be ‘just as good’. Customers will say ‘why should I use you, we’ve been successful with ‘. You need a really good reason to overcome that. However, in the .NET ecosystem, if you’re Microsoft, that’s not generally true. If Microsoft wants to make a document database, a messaging framework, a unit test framework or a deployment automation tool, it only needs to be 1/10th as good before the conversation immediately becomes ‘why should we use you over the Microsoft thing?’ Microsoft become the default option, even if they’re the last to the game.”
The post notes some ways Microsoft could play more fairly, but also describes why they are unlikely to do so. Octopus Deploy had maintained a healthy working relationship with Microsoft’s Azure team—until Azure Pipelines came out looking remarkably similar to Octopus. It was bundled with Visual Studio and promoted heavily. Stovell writes:
“We suddenly found ourselves competing with a product from Microsoft that looked similar, that was being given away (perception, at least), that was integrated with VS, and that was being pushed in every Azure keynote. Overnight it became the default. We were exhibiting at Build 2016 at the time much of this was announced, and I remember people coming to our booth asking ‘so why should we use you over the Microsoft thing?’. The ‘Microsoft thing’ was announced only 5 minutes prior!”
Is this the future of open source—is it doomed to be co-opted by companies? Maybe it is too late?
Cynthia Murrell, February 24, 2020
Smart Intelligence Analysis Software: What Operators Need Versus What Operators Get
February 24, 2020
DarkCyber noted “The ABCs of AI Enabled Intelligence Analysis.” The major problem with today’s intelware solutions is stated clearly:
The inability to adjust analysis tools to the operational environment is a prodigious problem.
Vendors want operators (licensees) to adapt to their environment. The idea is that the vendor’s environment is the only way to get the most out of an intelware system. What if the customer does not like this approach? Yeah.
Now the marketers, developers, and field engineers will insist that this statement is incorrect.
Here’s a passage from the write up which explains the operator’s point of view:
There are two key concepts to any data-centric system: First, analysis tools and applications should change with the data, and second, data should be easily accessible. Analysts must be able to configure the tools and algorithms of the systems to meet the realities of the battlefield, and data access should be as seamless as possible.
So what’s wrong? Here’s the explanation:
Within a data-centric context, the use of machine learning algorithms has led to breakthroughs in nearly every analysis endeavor, from fraud detection to image identification. To take advantage of these advances, intelligence analysts need systems that allow them to use computational tools and to constantly adjust, or retrain, their algorithms to a changing battlefield. Unfortunately, nearly all analysis software products in use today — including advanced systems like Palantir or Analyst Notebook — are closed systems that do not allow analysts to code custom algorithms, use the latest machine-learning algorithms, use the latest research in “explainable AI,” or even allow analysts to provide feedback to the software’s algorithms.
DarkCyber recommends taking a look at this write up.
Several observations:
- Marketers, vendors, and field engineers are busy with their own agendas. As a result, paying customers are usually ignored. Their requests are not on the road map, too difficult to make, or of no interest.
- Existing intelware solutions are purpose built to require training, support, and tradition. In one demo, the marketer could not understand that his actions were obscured by the control panel of the video conferencing system used to show off features. The person did not listen; the eager beaver was on auto pilot.
- Legacy systems like Analyst Notebook are often rarely used. The license is simply paid because, as one top dog law enforcement professional told me, “We don’t want to be without it. But no one has been to training recently. It is just here.”
These three problems are not part of the “AI baloney party.” I think these dot points underscore how deep the disconnect and how severe a problem today’s intelware helps foster.
For those who want to point out that certain tools developed in other countries are “better, faster, and cheaper.” Based on DarkCyber’s exposure to these systems, the newest tools are repeating the errors of the past 20 years.
A goldfish knows only water. The real world is different. But intelware fish don’t die. They force the customer to learn how to exist within their watery world.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 2020
Global CIO Survey: Surprises and Yawns
February 23, 2020
IT Brief published a story about a global CIO survey conducted by Logicalis, an integrator services IT company. The data appeared in “44% of CIOs Think Their AI Comprehension Not Very Successful.” Quite a headline. CIOs are able to give themselves a C minus or D plus in understanding artificial intelligence? Interesting. DarkCyber assumed its was As all the way.
Let’s look at some of the findings, and DarkCyber urges you to check out the original story for more of the data.
- Nine percent of the respondent “believe that their organization is very successful at comprehending the advantages of AI technology”
- 44 percent “believe their organization is not very successful at all” at comprehending the advantages of AI technology
- Internet of Things technologies (not defined, by the way) are used for crating new products, creating operational efficiencies, and enhancing existing products.
These data are based on a sample of 888 CIOs. DarkCyber does not know how these individuals were selected, how the questions were administered, or what methods were used to calculate the nice round percentages.
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2020
Google: Information Is for Us (Us Is the Google)
February 22, 2020
I won’t write about the alleged Google murder. Plus, I won’t run through the allegations related to this story: “Google Secretly Monitors Millions of School Kids, Lawsuit Alleges.” Google has many facets, and I find advertising Google style fascinating.
DarkCyber thinks the multi state investigation into Google’s possible violation of of antitrust law is philosophically challenging. The case involves information, consultants, Texas, and a tendril reaches Microsoft, an outfit skilled in software updates.
Let’s start with a Wall Street Journal (a story protected by a pay walls) revealed an interesting Google stance.
“Google Resists State Demands in Ad Probe” (February 22, 2020) reported that the company’s resistance to requests for information, in the words of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton:
They don’t believe that they’re clean because they don’t act in any way like they are.
Those involved is the Texas-led legal action want more than email. Google has balked. Google has groused about c0onsultants working on the case.
Why the hassle over ads? According to the Murdoch owned WSJ:
News Corp has complained that Google and other digital companies siphon ad revenue from content creators.
DarkCyber finds the pivot point in this multi state tug of war is information.
Google is an information company. Some believe that Google sought to index the world’s information. Then allow people to access the content.
But advertising revenue and a mostly ignored lawsuit about ad technology have altered the definition of information.
Google has information about its ad business. Some of that information has been requested via appropriate legal vehicles by the states’ taking Google to court. Google does not want to make that information available.
If the data were made available, presumably attorneys would be able to:
- Perform text analytics; for example, display statistical information about word occurrences, generate clusters of like data, etc.
- Generate indexed entities and tag them. Once tagged, these entities can be graphed so relationships become visible
- Output timelines of events and link those events to entities
- Search the content using key words and use the tags to reveal tough to discern items of information; who influenced what action when the words used to describe the activities were ambiguous to a non Googler.
There are other functions enabled by the corpus and current content processing technology.
DarkCyber noted these thoughts:
- Google is an information company and does not want that information disclosed
- Tools, some of which may run on Google’s cloud infrastructure, can reveal important nuances in the ad matter, nuances which otherwise may be impossible to discern by reading and human note taking
- The legal system, which has been most ineffectual in dealing with Google lacks laws and regulations which have not be enacted in the US to deal with digital monopolies.
Net net: Google may have the upper hand… again.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2020
Ring: An Amagenic Response?
February 22, 2020
Big technology companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google lie. All of these companies have lied about collecting user data and selling it. Amazon is in the hotspot once again and this time the company was caught lying about facial recognition. Check out the article from Buzzfeed News called, “Ring Says It Doesn’t Use Facial Recognition, Bit It Has ‘A Head Of Face Recognition Research.’”
Amazon’s Ring is a popular home security device deployed in ten million homes. Amazon has gone on the record stating that Ring does not use facial recognition technology, but Buzzfeed News discovered that Ring’s Ukraine branch are working on it. Amazon received flack before about working with law enforcement agencies and it turns out that Ring has partnerships with 405 police departments. According to the article:
“Police departments with Ring partnerships currently have the ability to see the general vicinity of camera locations in a community. Officers, using a tool called Ring Neighborhoods Portal, can then request that users who post videos to Ring’s app, Neighbors, share those clips with law enforcement. As BuzzFeed News previously reported, Ring’s terms of service gives the company an irrevocable, perpetual license to the video content users post on Neighbors.
Documents obtained by Motherboard found that some police departments were required to distribute free Ring cameras to residents and encourage adoption of the Neighbors app, while some cities paid Ring up to $100,000 to subsidize Ring cameras for community residents.”
Ring currently does not have facial recognition technology deployed to its units, but in the future it could be possible. Facial recognition technology is imperfect and constantly fails to identify individuals.
Ring is likely to remain in the digital frame.
Whitney Grace, February 22, 2020
Google and Its Trajectory from Dorm to Domination
February 21, 2020
I read the capitalist’s tool essay/opinion/analysis article called “From Exceptionalism To Unrest: Why Google’s Culture Is Changing.” The idea that Google and its change is an obvious one. The reason for the change, according to the write up, is relative deprivation. Here’s a bit of color on this interesting, MBA-meets-yoga-babble concept:
Insights on relative deprivation shed light on the dynamics Googlers may face in this respect. The research shows that when, for reasons outside of their control, people are denied opportunities that others possess and they desire or feel entitled to and equipped for, they will feel personally deprived, and grow not only dissatisfied, but also resentful.
What happens if a Googler perceives himself/herself/whatever self as being treated unfairly? Here’s the outcome:
The combination of feeling personally deprived as a result of a culture of exceptionalism and that progressive growth of sensitivity to or awareness of fairness components due to sustained uncertainty is an explosive recipe for Google.
You know that most people want an official Google mouse pad. The mouse pad says, “I am beloved by the Google.”
Why aren’t today’s Googlers protesting in front of the building and not doing handstands of happiness?
Googlers don’t want to solely be part of a cool club. They, too, as most humans, are looking for a work environment in which people can enjoy working with others and making a difference without having to think first and foremost about where they fall on the ‘excellence’ curve.
Keep in mind that I am old (75 this year to be exact) and I live in rural Kentucky, which is to some who live in fantasy the epicenter of technology, fair dealing in health care and bourbon, and political acumen. (You know the track record of Senator McConnell perhaps?)
From my vantage point, the write up is like an Instagram story: Selected moments, a filter, and difficult to figure out for those not in the Instagram flow.
The Google has changed and maybe there are a few other factors at work:
- Lack of regulation allowed the company to do whatever it wanted with zero consequences. Google was not quite anything goes, but it was able to deal with issues because everyone wanted a Google mouse pad, work at Google, or wear a T shirt with the Google logo. The Disneyland for the technically adept has aged. Check out theme parks that have been around for more than two decades. Paint doesn’t bring the zing of the good old days. The zero consequence mode has begun to rundown, and Googlers, Xooglers, and others using the company’s services know that the roller coaster is being pulled downhill.
- The management method is what I call high school science club management which I abbreviate to HSSCMM (the final m means method). Science clubs were when I was in high school a place for a small number of people who like science, math, electronics, and mostly one another. It was an “us” versus “them” place. Decisions were made by members who looked at the world through a lens calibrated differently. Prom? Nope, physics. Sports? Nope, statistics. Dates? Nope, derivatives. The HSSCMM tolerated heroin addiction, crazy behaviors like wearing roller blades to a meeting with Sumner Redstone, and sexual fiddling around. Procedures, policies, and a mainstream culture were not part of the game plan. And when these were required, the founders and some original Googlers distanced themselves. The result was a wonky miasma of HSSCMM and what was “required.”
- The arrival of money created an elite among the elite. Google, chock full of interesting people with some interesting ideas, migrated from the intricacies of just being clever to having to make stuff work. Lots of smart people want to come up with ideas and then move on. That’s why products and services disappear overnight. No clued in Googler wants to work on something like enterprise search or a loser social network. Google is less like a real science club and more like a group of people who repair ATMs and set up mobile phones. Google faces class war. Sexual improprieties is just part of the annoyances. Money talks, and in Google’s present position, shouts loudly.
There are other factors as well; for example, Wall Street’s need for more and more financial performance. Also, competition from outfits like Amazon, Apple, and Facebook which make it more difficult to make Google the way it was in its first five years of existence. Plus, the slow realization that advertising is not just annoying, it fuels an approach to information that requires comprehensive data about individual’s conscious and unconscious behavior on a 24/7 basis.
The analysis of Google by a culture architect is, as I suggested, interesting. It is, however, a small part of the Google ethos. Reducing Google to grousing employees concerned about fairness misses the mark. Google’s culture is changing, but the changes pivot on the post IPO world, the lack of government regulation, the lust for colorful tchotchkes, and a failure to look at the distinct phases through which Google moved. The calculus of these data combined with the real time information about the “now” Google leads to oversimplifications and fundamental misunderstandings about what Google set out to do, did, and is now doing.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2020
Trovicor Acquired
February 21, 2020
Information online suggests that Trovicor, a lawful intercept and specialized services company, has been acquired. One source (Clairfield) identifies the purchasers as the French firm Boss Industries, which may be a red herring. Another source (Intelligence Online, which is paywalled, thank you very much) says that the buyer is Nexa Technologies. Trovicor operates from Dubai, a city which is on the path to displacing Herliya, Israel, as the Silicon Valley of intelware and policeware.
Why the confusion? No idea.
DarkCyber’s sources suggest that the owner of Trovicor is Nexa Technologies. Nexa has an office in Dubai, and the firm has been working to create an “alliance” or “tie up” among other specialized services companies called Intellexa. Those mentioned as part of the Nexa “alliance” are Senpai Technologies and WiSpear. Nexa offers some well regarded audio surveillance capabilities. Other capabilities of Nexa are likely to include:
Network Intelligence – remote intelligence collection and production solutions based on a range of data sources
Lawful intercept – Mobile phone centric and WiFi data
Cyber Intelligence services – Malware, OSINT
InSight Data Fusion and Analytics systems – Text processing and analysis
OverSight – Administrative modules (Source: Varindia)
Nexa may have put the allegations that it sold surveillance equipment to countries on a “do not sell to” list. The investigation, according to Corpwatch, was allegedly
an expansion of an ongoing investigation of Amesys, which was a unit of Bull International SAS in France, for the 2007 sale of a surveillance system named Eagle GLINT to the Gaddafi regime in Libya, for approximately $25 million. The investigation was initiated in the summer of 2011 after FIDH and LDH lodged a complaint alleging that Eagle GLINT enabled widespread oppression and human and civil rights violations of in Libya between 2007 and 2011.
Is Trovicor going to help Nexa challenge the leaders in specialized services?
Possibly. A more realistic scenario is to compete for the steadily increasing funds allocated to deal with threats to nation states by actors antagonist to these sovereignties. Displacing firms like BAE Systems, NSO, and Verint may be a challenge.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2020
Facial Recognition: Those Error Rates? An Issue, Of Course
February 21, 2020
DarkCyber read “Machines Are Struggling to Recognize People in China.” The write up asserts:
The country’s ubiquitous facial recognition technology has been stymied by face masks.
One of the unexpected consequences of the Covid 19 virus is that citizens with face masks cannot be recognized.
“Unexpected” when adversarial fashion has been getting some traction among those who wish to move anonymously.
The write up adds:
Recently, Chinese authorities in some provinces have made medical face masks mandatory in public and the use and popularity of these is going up across the country. However, interestingly, as millions of masks are now worn by Chinese people, there has been an unintended consequence. Not only have the country’s near ubiquitous facial-recognition surveillance cameras been stymied, life is reported to have become difficult for ordinary citizens who use their faces for everyday things such as accessing their homes and bank accounts.
Now an “admission” by a US company:
Companies such as Apple have confirmed that the facial recognition software on their phones need a view of the person’s full face, including the nose, lips and jaw line, for them to work accurately. That said, a race for the next generation of facial-recognition technology is on, with algorithms that can go beyond masks. Time will tell whether they work. I bet they will.
To sum up: Masks defeat facial recognition. The future is a method of identification that can work with what is not covered plus any other data available to the system; for example, pattern of walking and geo-location.
For now, though, the remedy for the use of masks is lousy facial recognition and more effort to find innovations.
The author of the write up is a — wait for it — venture capital professional. And what country leads the world in facial recognition? China, according to the VC professional.
The future is better person recognition of which the face is one factor.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2020
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