Mark Gilbert’s Blog

Yesterday Google purged it’s search index of reportedly over 40,000 links to sites containing malware. Over the last few months Sunbelt, the company that produces the Counterspy application, have been tracking the sites and the SEO techniques these sites have been using to get themselves to the top of the Google ranks.

There is some nice dissection of the malware links over at the Sunbelt blog.

The SEO side of things was done using a bot net to post thousands upon thousands of link in forums and comment systems to the dodgy sites in question, which is what nailed them the top Google ranks.

The malware at the heart of it all is called “Scam.Iwin” by Sunbelt, which turns infected PCs into zombie units to join the bot net and post all the needed links to crack the Google Page Rank algorithm.

So let this be a lesson to all of you, keep your machines patched and anti-virus software updated on a regular basis. Personally for Windows users I would have to recommend Kaspersky Internet Secuirty, it really seems like the best product going. High detection and removal rates, and I speak from experience when talking about it, I’ve used it at work on machines and it is leagues ahead of Norton or McAfee.

Cheers

Google have recently acquired Feedburner, the company who provide feed readership and distribution statistics to millions. I must confess I haven’t used feedburner for quite some time, but on hearing this news I thought I would check back and see whats changed. Quite a lot apparently, the site has had a redesign and the whole process of setting up your feeds is a lot easier. I will continue to use feedburner and see how many people are reading (or not reading) my website.

Cheers

Google is currently in the process of acquiring a small Silicon Valley startup called GreenBorder which helps protect users against malware.

This coupled with the fact that Google recently started a blog devoted to online security suggests Google may be looking to move into the computer security territory more commonly occupied by the likes of Symantec and McAfee.GreenBorder works by integrating with IE and Firefox and isolates web content in a Sandbox area that can have malware flushed out like temporary files or can be cleared when the browser session ends.Whether Google simply plans to extend on it’s current feature of warning users when they may be about to view a site on which malware is known to reside, or integrate it into their Google Desktop offering remains to be seen.Cheers

Google today released their Google Desktop software suite for OS X users. The softwrae offers much of the functionality of the PC version including searching files on your local machine and indexing your GMail account, as well as allowing you to search your web browsing history. There are a few things missing, most notably the widgets, which are just like Dashboard widgets anyway, so why would you need the duplication? Now that I think about it spotlight already indexes my local files, so why would I need Google Desktop at all? Oh well, I suppose it’s always nice to have the choice.

If you are interested in downloading Google Desktop you’ll find the download link with all Google’s other Mac apps.

Enjoy

The title makes Google sound like an eccentric evil genius from a cartoon, harnessing the power of the sun itself to enslave mankind. Alas, nothing quite as dramatic, they have installed a large number of solar panels though, 9,212 to be exact, covering the entire roof of the Googleplex and then some. They produce a total of 1.6MW at peak output which is enough to cover 30% of Google’s peak power demand.

In order to install more panels they even covered parking areas to both cool cars and to generate yet more power. Google’s Anthony Ravitz explained that in 7.5 years they will have earned their investment back and after that will have inexpensive power for years to come.

This is a perfect example of corporate and environmental concerns acting as one. Google did mention that this was coming on their blog back in October 2006. Ars has the full story today though.

Cheers

Google, or more specifically the YouTube arm of it’s business is being sued by Viacom for $1bn. They cite the reason for this legal action as 160,000 of their videos illegally shared on YouTube. Viacom continue to allege that Google has done nothing to remove the infringing material and that they continue to profit off the back of Viacom works.

I would argue that this is not quite true as Google has offered tools for people to find and remove offending videos and has not really had much time since it’s $1.65 bn puchase to put a more effective method in place.

Viacom could be shooting them selves in the foot here. They are letting the courts decide what the DMCA loosely defines as “reasonable effort to remove copyrighted material”. There is a very good chance the courts could rule in Google’s favour therefore setting a rather unfavourable precident case against Viacom and other media companies. I think it is sufficient to say that Google will not simply roll over and take this, they have the resources to fight this.

Cheers

Maybe this is old news but I just noticed that Gmail or Googlemail as it is now known here in blighty is now not only open by invitation only. Google have a link to sign up on their front page and if you go to gmail.com you can sign up from there too. I still have the option to send invites to people but I can assue that will disappear fairly quickly. It’s still beta though, just a wider public beta instead of invitation only.

Cheers

Well I really thought that it was all simply rumour which is why I was only planning to write a bit about the Google-YouTube deal. Well I was wrong. While watching Newsnight, Paxman said that there would be some discussion about the buyout of YouTube by Google, I was most surprised.

Anyway the beef of the deal is that Google are paying $1.65 billion in stock for the 18 month old start-up. All we really know for now is that the two brands will stay seperate and that Google Video will remain, but quite how it will differ in what it offers from YouTube remains to be seen. Eric Schmidt did mention that he believes that one of the principal strengths of YouTube is the soial networking aspect of the site. However Google have moved into the whole social networking thing before with the purchase of Orkut, and we’ve seen big things coming out of that side of the business of late haven’t we?

Cheers

Google’s main website google.com has been blocked in mainland China. The majority of users have been unable to access the site since 31st May. The Chinese language version of Google, Google.cn is still available, although it is censored to comply with Chinese government requests. Really it was inevitable that eventually the English language version of Google’s website would be blocked, when the Chinese specific one offers much easier censorship oportunities for the government.

This comes at the same time that Sergey Brin suggested Google did compromise it’s principles by giving into Chinese censorship demands.

I’m in two minds with this now. The Chinese government was censoring the English language version of Google already, as well as most other “undesirable” sites on the net, so I don’t think that Google creating a Chinese language version of their site and censoring it has affected the Chinese people all that much. Whether Google compromised itself in doing so though is another question entirely.

Cheers

There have been so many rumours of a Google browser that a lot of people were absolutely convinced it would happen one day. With news that Google was hiring Mozilla developers and rumours that they were looking to take over Opera lenidng credance to the arguement it looked more and moe likely.

However during a recent conferance call with investors and analysts Google CEO Eric Schmidt denied any of the rumours were true.

“The way Google operates, we would not build a browser for the fun of building a browser and creating another choice… We would only do something along the lines you’re describing if there was a real end-user benefit. So far, we’ve seen the end-user benefit has been to augment or expand both AJAX and JavaScript, which is available on all the browsers. We’re working closely with Firefox, we have a good partnership with Safari and with Opera and a couple of others as well. That seems like a good answer for us right now, strategically.”

So there you have it, straight from the top man himself, there will be no GBrowser.

While a Google browser would be very popular there really are a ot of good choices out there already, Firefox and Opera on the PC, Safari, Opera and Camino on the Mac, and Firefox on Linux. There really is no place for a Google browser. They already have good ties with Opera and Firefox and have also managed to seal a deal with Apple to work with Safari developers.

So lets not take the Google browser rumours too seriously

Cheers

Google has lost it’s legal battle with porn company Perfect 10 to decide whether displaying some of their images as thumbnails in it’s image search constitutes fair use.

A Federal judge in the US has ruled that Google have violated copyright by displaying small images from the porn magazine Perfect 10. They suggested that Google users could find Perfect 10’s pictures of nude women by providing links to sites containing pirated copies of its images for free.

The one good part of the ruling though was that the judge said that Google did not gain financially from the thumbnails and suggested instead the websites hosting the pirated images were at fault. This would mean that a damages claim against Google would more than likely not succeed.

There is more on this news from the BBC

Cheers

Ben sent me this funny link to a video about Google, it made me laugh quite a lot so I thought it deserved posting on here. I hope you all enjoy it because getting it to display correctly on here without messing up my alignment was a complete nightmare.

According to The Independent that’s the value that has come off Google’s share price in the last week. That’s 12% of their value gone.

There are a few possible reasons for this. The censorship descision in China hasn’t helped, neither has the fact that they are being sued by publishers for their attempt to digitise the world’s book and make them available online. Telecomms providors do not like the Google plan’s for free phone calls, newspapers are trying to prevent Google from digitising library materials, governments are worried about Google Earth and the national security implications, privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function.

it would seem that Google are making a lot of enemies, and there are a lot of people looking to protect their own little part of the market from the search giant and it’s grand plans for the world’s information.

Again I think only time will tell with this. Page and Brin aren’t worried though, they’re more concerned with meeting long term goals than short term financial ones.

Cheers

A few follow up items of news for the last post about Google selling out to Chinese demands. I’ll keep it brief since due to one thing and another it was nearly 5 a.m. when I went to bed last night and I was up for work at 8:30 a.m.

The BBC is running a follow up article on the move, written by one of their technology analysts Bill Thompson. He feels that the decision to censor results isn’t such a bad thing, since Google will actively inform the user that certain results have been restricted. If the government does the filtering there is no hint that anything is amiss.

Censorship also goes on all over the world in other countries,

“In some countries the controls are obvious and oppressive - everyone who wants to use the internet in Cuba must register with the government, bloggers in Iran are gaoled and their websites are blocked, and governments from Saudi Arabia to Singapore decide which websites their citizens can see. In other countries it’s a bit more subtle. Search for Falun Gong using Yahoo! in China and you’ll find that the results list is rather sparse and consists mostly of government-sponsored sites which oppose the group.”

Bill Gates has also put a comment in on the Google decision which was published by The Times.

He said

“the Internet is contributing to Chinese political engagement as access to the outside world is preventing more censorship”

However Irene Khan, the secretary-general of Amnesty International said when writing for The Times that Google had“reinforced the trend in the IT industry of kowtowing to Chinese demands of censorship”

She said “Last year, Yahoo provided the Chinese with details leading to the arrest and sentencing of a journalist; Microsoft has barred a blog critical of the government and launched a portal blocking the use of words such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Now Google has weeded out websites that China does not like.”

I still personally feel it is a bad thing, and Google could have done more

Cheers

With a company mantra of “Do No Evil” it would seem extreemly ironic that Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin would sell out to the oppressive Chinese government.

For those of you who havn’t read about this, Google on Tuesday said that they would comply with the Chinese governments repressive request to censor it’s search results in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC, another irony calling yourself the “people’s republic” for a country run through a dictatorship, would like Google search results to be doctored to meet with the governments approval. While Google has offered a Chinese translated version of its search engine for many years, it’s users have been frustrated by government blocks on the site. Google will set up a new site, Google.cn which it will censor to satisfy the Chinese government.

The first question which should be asked is why? Why would Google go against it’s own doctrine and do something such as this? Well the answer more than likely is that old chestnut, money.
Money and lots of it too.

At first glance this would appear to be incorrect, Google is expected to turn in $4.03 billion in sales for 2005 and to produce $6.55 billion in sales this coming year. Standing in stark comparison, Baidu.com, the current search engine market leader in China produced $38 million in sales in 2004 and $72 million in 2005.
However with the Chinese econommy set to literally explode in the same way the Taiwanese economy has done since the 40’s. Taiwan has the 17th largest economy in the world and has been one of the fastest growing economies for the last 50 years. With China set to do the same Google decided that China was a market they wanted to be a part of.

Another irony lies in the fact that just last week Google sid they would resist a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena to obtain it’s search query data on behalf of the US government. On the light of the Chinese choice, Google’s decision to withold the data was more about not wanting to be bullied by the US government than it was a privacy issue on behalf of it’s users.

Google decided that it would be more damaging to pull out of China all together than it would be to comply and censor itself. Is this true though, is partial information better than non at all? Well that depends wholely on whether Google wants to stick to it’s principals, and further a free and unrestricted flow of information for all the world’s people, or whether it wants to position itself to cash in on the next big Asian “Tiger Economy”.

“The real question is whether Google could have done better - using its market power to support free speech and influence the Chinese government to allow the broadest range of speech to reach the Chinese people,” said Kurt Opsahl, an attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Perhaps some results are better than no results, but at the same time, it places a single gatekeeper between the people and the information, which is easier to regulate and control.”

I personally am not sure whether limited and controled information is really better than no information at all.

I do think they could have done better. The Chinese government is only communist when it suits them. If for any given descision at any particular time, capitalism is a better choice they go with capitalism. If they are honest they would like to be a bigger power in the world economy and are probably jealous of Taiwan, Google can help them achieve that goal, in the same way that Google wants to partner with China, I would wager that China also want’s to partner with Google.

Google is one of the largets companies in the world, their stock value puts them far ahead of Microsoft and other such tech giants, I just feel they could have done more or tried harder instead of caving in so easily. But I guess I’m not sat in the boardroom of Google like Page and Brin having to choose between my principals and billions of Dollars.

Cheers

Google News has finally ome out of it’s beta stage. It had been a beta piece of software for 3 years and 4 months, so I guess congratulations are in order.

Cheers

The LA Times is reporting that Google may soon release a PC running not MS Windows but it’s own operating system.
“Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft’s Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap — perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.”

The article goes on to state that the new PC’s could be called “Google Cubes” and would do all the general media functions that Windows Media Center Edition does now.

With all the other things Google has been working on such as video search and equiping the entire San Francisco area with wireless access, buying a share in AOL, they could be poised to distribute not only general Internet access through the newtwork, but also TV on demand and video, all straight to the consumers Google Cube. This would certainly upset a lot of players in the media business.

I personally would like to see Google move into this area, the large media conglomerates currently have far too much power as it all currently stands and these serious of power plays buy Google could be the start of a changing of the gaurd. Changing from the old style media services such as TV and radio, where the content is provided to the broadcasters shcedule, to one where it is the viewer who controls what they watch and when.
When you think about it this makes more sense, it’s the viewers who fund TV and radio so why shouldn’t they have what they want when they want?

let’s all hope Google succeeds in their new offerings.

Cheers

The BBC is reporting that Google is set to buy a 5% stake in AOL. The deal reputed to be worth $1 billion has finally been tied with contenders Microsoft and Yahoo! backing out.
AOL is currently Google’s largest customer. During the first 3 quarters of 2005, AOL accounted for approximately $429m, or 10%, of Google’s revenue.
This also shows that Google will pay big money to stop Microsoft muscling in on the now extreemly lucrative Internet search market.

Cheers

Google has just released a version of Gmail or GoogleMail as it’s now known in the UK which you can access on your mobile phone. It seems like a natural extension of the current services, with Google Talk, GMail and now the mobile version of GMail you can access these services wherever you are.

Cheers

As seen on the Opera Watch blog there are rumours in the pipe that Google is making plays to buy Opera. This rumour is more than likely true and ould have something to do with the fact that the web address http://www.gbrowser.com is registered to Google.

The other speculation is that maybe the two are collaborating on some kind of project. Google have recently been hiring Mozilla and Firefox developers onto their staff.

Cheers