News

Posted in Poor Quality Assurance, Undependable Support

Now you see it, now you don’t: Google “glitch” renders email inaccessible for 150,000 Gmail users

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

In another sign that quality assurance has gone downhill at Google, several media outlets are reporting that a “glitch” in the Monster of Mountain View’s Gmail product has resulted in an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand users temporarily losing access to all their email:

Google, we have a problem. About 150,000 Gmail account holders woke up to a nightmare this morning, with all their e-mail, attachments and Google Chat logs gone. What happened?

Google explains that “less than 0.08%” of all Gmail users were affected by the bug, which completely reset accounts, even down to the detail offering a welcome message to those users when they first logged on today. They, and especially visitors to the Gmail Help Forum, were not amused.

Nice. Of course, Google logs pretty much everything it can for data-mining purposes – which means ironically that its employees have access to the messages of the 150,000 affected users even the users themselves don’t.

A great many people have been lured into signing up for Gmail over the years because they’ve bought into Google’s marketing hype, or they’ve trusted someone who has. It’s true that Google has traditionally included features in Gmail that its competitors (Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail) haven’t, like unfettered POP and IMAP access. But Gmail’s competition is hardly the gold standard. The best email service usually costs money and comes with free, responsive technical support, along with generous storage limits and no advertising in the web interface.

Those who use Gmail not only consent to being spied on constantly by Google, they also run the risk that something like this will happen… and that when it does, they’ll be at the mercy of a faceless corporation that doesn’t provide dependable support.

Posted in War on Privacy

Google to del.icio.us users: Trust us with your link collections

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The Monster of Mountain View sees an opportunity to gobble up more user data:

In reaction to what many have thought to be Yahoo’s mismanagement of the popular bookmarking service Delicious in the past couple of months, many people have tried to roll their own Delicious importers in hopes of taking advantage of the traffic exodus. Google too has today rolled out a Delicious migration tool for Google Bookmarks, to give people who were scared of the demise of Delicious a safe haven for their meticulously curated links.

On background: Yahoo gave many people a scare a couple of months ago when an internal Yahoo slide was leaked, revealing that Yahoo would be sunsetting Delicious, a social bookmarking site with a vehement cult following. It turns out that by “sunsetting” Yahoo actually meant selling (heh, that’s not actually what sunsetting means). But while Yahoo has approached numerous people about unloading the property, it still has not found a buyer after three months.

There’s no reason to use Google Bookmarks when there are far better del.icio.us alternatives out there… like Histori.us, which can easily import del.icio.us link collections. Or Zootool.

Posted in Poor Quality Assurance

New York Times investigates how JCPenney’s “search optimization” firm gamed Google

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

This article is a must-read:

For months, [JCPenney] was consistently at or near the top in [Google] searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“tablecloths”) to the strangely specific (“grommet top curtains”).

This striking performance lasted for months, most crucially through the holiday season, when there is a huge spike in online shopping. J. C. Penney even beat out the sites of manufacturers in searches for the products of those manufacturers. Type in “Samsonite carry on luggage,” for instance, and Penney for months was first on the list, ahead of Samsonite.com.

How did Penney accomplish this? Its search optimization firm cheated by soliciting links to Penney’s site from untold numbers of other websites, including content farms. The cheating was discovered by the New York Times, which published a high-profile article about it. Google subsequently took action, but the damage to its reputation has already been done.

Google’s so-called anti-spam guru Matt Cutts claims the company cares about the integrity of its search results. But actions speak louder than words. Increasingly, what’s relevant and useful is buried in Google searches, while spam and junk float to the top. Maybe that’s not by accident, either.

Last year, Advertising Age obtained a Google document that listed some of its largest advertisers, including AT&T, eBay and yes, J. C. Penney. The company, this document said, spent $2.46 million a month on paid Google search ads — the kind you see next to organic results.

Is it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers? It’s the sort of question that European Union officials are now studying in an investigation of possible antitrust abuses by Google.

Google does not exist to make the world a better place or improve human knowledge. It exists to spy on people and make money. That explains why quality assurance has been declining: it’s just not a priority for the Monster of Mountain View.

There’s no reason to use Google for search anymore, particularly with so many good alternatives now out there, including startups like Blekko.

Posted in Poor Quality Assurance

Washington Post staff writer: Google search sucks

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The Washington Post’s Michael S. Rosenwald discovers what many of us have known for some time: Google search sucks and frequently fails to provide relevant answers or useful information:

Earlier this month, my friend Rebecca Skloot replaced her hulking big-box TV – I can vouch for its girth, having moved it once – with a flat-screen no thicker than an iPad. She turned it on and, horror of horrors, the picture was lousy.

Displeased, she turned to Google for help. What the search engine delivered was a mess, a collection of spammy sites riddled with ads. So she turned to Twitter, posting: “Old TV died, got newfangled LED TV. Shocked how bad/fake movies look! . . . Others have this prob?”

Solutions to Skloot’s technological melodrama rolled in. Fix this setting, turn this off, shazam! A few hours later, she posted: “Thx 4 fixing my TV today! It’s example of how Google=in trouble. Googled 4 fix, got spam sites. On Twitter answer=asap.”

Skloot’s story seems ever more common these days. Google is facing withering criticism from tech bloggers and search engine experts who say the world’s premier gateway to digital information is increasingly being gamed by spammers. Google, they say, is losing.

Google has been losing the battle against spammers for years in part because it doesn’t care about quality assurance in its site results. The company’s evangelists and spokesmen will say otherwise, but actions speak louder than words.

Daniel Brandt, who runs Google Watch, noted years ago (back in the early 2000s) that if you add -.com to a search query, it improves the quality of results dramatically. That’s because most spam sites use the .com TLD (top level domain).

Many of the spam sites or content farms Google has failed to eliminate or deprioritize in search results display Google ads themselves, and spy on their own users using Google Analytics. Google has no incentive to weed out these sites, because that would hurt its own bottom line.

Data from Experian Hitwise, referenced in Rosenwald’s article, confirms that Google’s search engine is headed downhill. Google’s success rate declined thirteen percent last year, while Microsoft’s Bing rose by nine percent.

Lackluster quality assurance is just another reason why people should Leave Google Behind.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Hello world!

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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Posted in War on Privacy

Google fan: Monster of Mountain View is on the decline

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Writing for TechCrunch, Jon Evans opines that Google has lost its way, and is headed for a downfall:

A spectre is haunting Mountain View. No, not bed bugs: bit rot. Google is in serious decline.

I don’t see how they can deny it. They have famously always been a data-driven organization, and the data is compelling. Business Insider’s list of the 15 biggest tech flops of 2010 cited no fewer than four from Google: Buzz, Wave, Google TV, and the Nexus One. Bizarre errors have erupted in Google Maps. Many of its best engineers are leaving. Influential luminaries like Vivek Wadhwa, Jeff Atwood, Marco Arment and Paul Kedrosky (way ahead of the curve) say their core search service is much degraded from its glory years, and the numbers bear this out; after years of unassailable dominance, Google’s search-market share is diminishing—it dropped an eyebrow-raising 1.2% just from October to November—while Microsoft’s Bing, whose UI Google tried and embarrassingly failed to copy earlier this year, is on the rise.

It’s a stretch to say Google is in decline. They’re still a big, very powerful company with the ability to keep close tabs on zillions of people.

They’ve had setbacks, yes, but those setbacks are by no means fatal.

Google is well-entrenched in many ways. For instance, the number of websites that have Google scripts embedded in them (Analytics, Adsense, APIs, recaptcha, YouTube) is astronomical. And the number of people Google can track using the spyware baked into Android is also huge.

Google won’t implode overnight. But hopefully, their setbacks will continue mounting, and their dominance will fade as people start to realize the extent of their assault on user privacy.

Posted in Legal Troubles

Europe initiates antitrust investigation of Google

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The Monster of Mountain View’s monopolistic practices are finally drawing a response:

The top European antitrust regulator opened an investigation into Google on Tuesday to examine allegations that the Internet giant has abused its dominance in online search.

The decision follows complaints by specialized search-related companies about “unfavorable treatment of their services in Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results,” the European Commission said in a statement.

The commission said it was also looking into whether Google might have given its own services “preferential placement” in search results. In addition to its search engine, Google has a growing number of other online businesses, including mapping, translation, video and electronic commerce services, many of which, like the search engine, are supported by advertising.

Google’s tendency to give its own services preferential placement in search results appears to be an internal policy. It’s already been well-documented by critics. From Google’s perspective, cross promotion makes a world of sense. The growth of Google’s spyware-laden browser, Chrome, has been mostly driven by Google’s own Internet properties, including YouTube and Blogger, where users are encouraged daily to try Chrome. Most people who download Chrome have absolutely no idea what the implications are for their privacy and security.

Aggressive cross-promotion is also what got Microsoft in trouble years and years ago. Microsoft used its Windows operating system to destroy the market for Netscape Navigator, by giving Internet Explorer away for free and then bundling it into Windows as the default browser. Microsoft managed to survive its own antitrust investigation, but the legal battle and other circumstances took a toll on Microsoft’s stock, which is still limping along nearly a decade later.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Monster of Mountain View? How about just Mountain View Monster? Google seeks town takeover

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The San Jose Mercury News reports that Mountain View is running out of space for companies that aren't named Google:

Google's aggressive online growth increasingly has a counterpart in bricks and mortar, with the company's Mountain View headquarters mushrooming in the past four years to occupy more than 4 million square feet, or the equivalent of about 40 Home Depot stores.

But that's just a start. On Silicon Valley's NASA base, Google is preparing to build a new corporate campus with fitness and day care facilities and — in a first in the valley — employee housing, adding 1.2 million square feet of space to Google's real estate holdings.

Although other valley giants also occupy vast amounts of real estate, Google is growing in a way that is distinct, remaking its surroundings according to its own values. In addition to buying and leasing buildings and squeezing out some of its neighbors, it is prodding the city of Mountain View to transform the area around its headquarters, adding housing and retail to create an environment more like a town center.

The Monster of Mountain View's appetite for land and office space is resulting in a loss of economic diversity in town, as other tech firms migrate elsewhere:

Phil Mahoney, executive vice president with Cornish & Carey, recently relocated the semiconductor company MIPS Technologies to Sunnyvale, “as much as anything, getting out of Google's way.”

“The handwriting is on the wall. You don't want to compete with them for space,” Mahoney said. “In real estate circles, it's called 'the Google effect.' “

Google is so hungry for space it's willing to pay to get rid of tenants so it can use every bit of space in buildings it has purchased.

Other businesses feel pressured by Google's expansion, like Colin McDowell's McDSP, a tiny atoll bobbing in the Googley ocean.

McDSP's 1,682-square-foot office is now the only non-Google space in 1300 Crittenden Lane, a 115,000-square-foot building that Google bought in 2006 as part of a $319 million deal that also included the core Googleplex. McDowell, the CEO of the six-person audio-technology company, has a lease through 2014, but Google wants him out now. McDowell hasn't wanted to move, saying the rent is good and the offices are close to Shoreline Amphitheatre, where professional musicians frequently need McDSP's services on short notice.

As he enters his office each day and peers through a glass window into a Google break room replete with a Google-logo espresso maker, racks of candy, snacks and an often boisterous foosball table, McDowell says he can't help but feel a hint of jealousy.

“Could you just not flaunt it so bad?” he says of his landlord. “Not right in our face?”

Mercy? From Google? Fuhgetaboutit.

Posted in Shoddy Security

Young Armenian blogger discovers huge Google security hole

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Kudos to Vahe G for once again reminding us why entrusting our user data to Google is a bad idea:

Facebook would probably just consider this a feature, but the rest of us will definitely consider this a big security hole. The creator of http://guntada.blogspot.com (don’t visit that site just yet) emailed us this morning to explain.

If you’re already logged in to any Google account (Gmail, etc.), and visit that site, he’s harvested your Google email. And proves it by emailing you immediately.

What Vahe did is use Google’s Blogger to create a blog (on BlogSpot) and then take advantage of a security vulnerability to harvest the email address of anyone signed in with a Google account. The harvesting was taking place just by visiting the blog in question. As proof, Vahe was sending messages to the harvested addresses urging the individuals who own those addresses to share a goo.gl shortlink pointing to the blog with friends.

After TechCrunch reported the exploit, Google took down the blog, and Vahe sent an email to TechCrunch’s founder, Mike Arrington, explaining the vulnerability:

Hi Mr. Arrington,

I see you have already shared the news. It’s good that google got it down, I really don’t want people to know about how that was done (if Google contacts I will definitely tell them – they just don’t answer my emails). Problem relies solely on Google.

Problem is I asked a lot of people, and most of them don’t really understand and care about this kind of things and big companies act like they all really protect our privacy and such, but they see that people don’t care and don’t do anything really.

Regards,
Vahe G. (Armenian 21yrs guy whom Google doesn’t wanted to even talk to)

That’s one incredibly smart guy.

Google’s response?

We quickly fixed the issue in the Google Apps Script API that could have allowed for emails to be sent to Gmail users without their permission if they visited a specially designed website while signed into their account. We immediately removed the site that demonstrated this issue, and disabled the functionality soon after. We encourage responsible disclosure of potential application security issues to security@google.com.

It’s telling that the issue only got addressed after it made it onto one of the most widely-read technology blogs in the world. By not catching these things earlier, Google is exposing its users to external harm. All the more reason not to have a Google account and not do business with Google at all.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Chrome fan says Google has removed important privacy control from Chrome

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

An individual who naively switched to Chrome a few months ago because the existence of one particular feature convinced her the spyware-laden brower could be recommended to persons “concerned about privacy and security issues” is now having second thoughts:

It seems that the new Chrome beta (7.0.517.24) — being automatically pushed out now — has (with no warning whatsoever) removed what I consider to be a key functionality, the cookie control setting that allows you to be queried for a decision whenever new cookies are being offered, and permits you to determine how cookies from related sites will be handled in the future.

She concludes:

Without such a setting, or an alternative means to access equivalent functionality (e.g. through a browser plugin/extension), I will likely be forced to move back to Firefox, and recommend the same course for most other individuals and firms.

It's no doubt true that many Chrome users have never accessed this feature, and choose rather simply to accept all cookies on a willy-nilly basis. But this simply is not an acceptable modus operandi for vast numbers of users and organizations who need convenient site-by-site cookie control. Nor is manually entering cookie exceptions into tables a practical solution on a routine basis.

Apparently this person, Lauren Weinstein, is unaware that Google logs keystrokes typed into the Chrome search box. She's also unaware that per-site cookie control – by itself – is almost meaningless in terms of safeguarding one's privacy. Cookie control doesn't provide the capability to block web bugs and trackers, find and erase Flash cookies, or prevent malicious JavaScript from executing, for example.

There are add-ons for Firefox that do all of those things.

Nobody concerned about privacy and/or security should be using any Google products, period. To say that Google is hostile to the very idea of user privacy is an understatement. Google is actively working to create a world in which there is no privacy. Those opposed to such a dystopia should be boycotting Google products and services regardless of how usable or useful those products and services may be. Those who do not stand on principle will have to accept the consequences of allowing their computer, mobile phone, and television to essentially become telescreens for Google.