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Investigations in to illegal Google data gathering continues

Matt Thomas — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:28:40 +0000

France is the latest country to be drawn in to the Google data row, as officials continue to investigate whether the search engine giant obtained information about its users by contravening privacy laws. Google is accused of gathering and retaining sensitive data including passwords, when it was developing its Street View service.

The French data protection agency CIL is the latest organisation to examine the way Google conducted its research, to identify whether any illegal or immoral actions were executed. CIL is collating evidence on Google to ascertain whether or not the firm should be prosecuted for the illegal retrieval of data.

Google collected information about its users when Google logged wi-fi hotspots to develop their suite of location-based services. Google has issued a statement that its actions caused no harm to anyone, and therefore should not give rise to censure from official bodies responsible for enforcing privacy protocol.

Following the footsteps of many other data protection agencies, CIL has requested that Google hand over copies of its data so that it can be assessed, before a decision is made as to whether Google has preached privacy laws.

CNIL chairman Alex Turk said Google handed the data to the agency on 4 June, following an official request and it was now in the process of assessing the data to see if it was obtained illegally. First impressions of the data suggest that it contains information which is normally only held by the banking industry and medical professionals. Information found is said to include email passwords and text from messages.

CNIL is looking to reach a decision by September as to whether Google was in the wrong for the way it collated information. CNIL is able to issue a warning, create a fine or pass the case onwards for prosecution should any foul play be detected.

Google is now working with the French authorities and many others globally, states that it would be happy to delete the information which has been gathered if asked. “We have reached out to the data protection authorities in the relevant countries, and are working with them to answer any questions they have,” a Google spokesperson said.

Google Chrome browser gets World Cup extension

Andre — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:08:41 +0000

Search engine giants Google and football federation Fifa have collaborated on a range of tools that will make it much easier to find the latest World Cup news and scores directly from Google’s Chrome browser.
The brand new Fifa extension provides a live feed of results, news and match statistics, and users will be able to personalise the plug-in to display goal alerts for their favourite team.

Google has also optimised its search service to deliver the specific information that people want, no matter how cryptic the search terms. For instance, Googling “World Cup”, “World Cup Spain”, or even “World Cup Group G” will pull up player profiles, live scores and player profiles for any team affiliated with your search.

There is also a Fifa gadget for Google’s personalised iGoogle home page, which streams team news, player information and matches directly to users. Meanwhile, fans that are travelling to South Africa to watch games will be able to use Google Maps to find out about host cities, and even to plan their route using Street View photography.

Google’s bitter rivals Microsoft have also created a similar service for World Cup fans on their Bing search engine. Bing’s social search page has a list of popular trending topics, as well as public messages from Facebook and Twitter.

Google’s Chrome operating system to be launched in fourth quarter

Matt Thomas — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:00:56 +0000

Google plans to release its hotly anticipated Chrome operating system toward the end of the year, they will initially be targeting laptop users, according to the head of the project.

The Chrome OS “will be offered to users in the fourth quarter of the year,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management, during a conference at the Computex electronics exhibition in Taipei.

The statement appears to correct all the internet talk that Google’s OS would be released in the third quarter, inevitably it is designed primarily to compete with Microsoft’s Windows 7 amongst other operating systems.

The Chrome Web Store will be opening at the same time so that people can download Web applications that can be installed on the Chrome OS, he added.

“For Chrome OS, we are focused on laptops for this year,” he said at a news conference later on in the day.

The company has designed Chrome OS primarily for clamshell devices with touch-pads, keyboards and screens between 10 inches and 12 inches across, he said, validating that anything, including net-books, that fits the hardware specifications will have no problems getting Google certification.

Certification by the company is meant to ensure that hardware makers create a quality device for users.

Initially, Chrome OS will limit certain customisation such as user interfaces that some Taiwanese laptop makers are planning, but over time more customisation will be allowed. “So, yes to UIs, but later,” he said

YouTube channels receive Google Moderator update

Andy Russell — Mon, 31 May 2010 09:43:48 +0000

Google has decided to release a full version of its Moderator service for all YouTube users, this will allow channel owners and viewers to talk about videos and other relevant topics (or completely irrelevant ones as is often the case) on channel pages, as a more structured alternative to the standard video comments.

The YouTube blog said: “Starting today, we’ve integrated the ability to use Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel.

“Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time.”

By giving channel owners the power to police offensive content, which can also be voted down by users, the Google/YouTube Moderator aims to bring some much needed order to the always chaotic and sometimes offensive world of YouTube comments.

Google Moderator was originally developed by the company’s engineer Taliver Heath as a way to prioritise questions asked during company meetings and lectures, it really came to the boil in December 2008 when it was used by the transition team of US President-Elect Barack Obama to help him respond to questions from the general public.

Generating 5.7 million votes from the public on 86,000 questions in just over a week of operation, Google Moderator was a key catalyst in the President’s appointment of Google’s project manager Katie Jacobs Stanton to the new position of Director of Citizen Participation.

As well as being a useful social tool, the Moderator feature can also be helpful for corporate YouTube channels as a way to receive and respond to user feedback. Organisations such as the New York Times are already asking users to submit their questions on the dynamic channel.

Google cleared to purchase Ad Mob

Andy Russell — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:49:43 +0000

After a fairly drawn out affair authorities in the US have approved Google’s controversial $750m acquisition of AdMob, the leading mobile phone advertising company in the world.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) moved quickly to dismiss any concern raised by advertisers, including Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising giant WPP, that the deal would give the already dominant Mountain View company too much power in the increasingly lucrative mobile search market.

“The deal is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks,” the FTC stated.

The regulator, which has been investigating the deal for six months, said that although the combination of two leading mobile advertising networks may raise “serious antitrust [competition] issues” these were “overshadowed” by Apple’s imminent move to launch an advertising network to rival Google’s.

“As a result of Apple’s entry into the market, AdMob’s success to date on the iPhone platform is unlikely to be an accurate predictor of AdMob’s competitive significance going forward, whether AdMob is owned by Google or not,” the FTC said.

Google’s vice president of product management, Susan Wojcicki, has this to say:

“As mobile phone usage increases, growth in mobile advertising is only going to accelerate. This benefits mobile developers and publishers who will get better advertising solutions, marketers who will find new ways to reach consumers, and users who will get better ads and more free content.”

She continued: “We’re very excited about the possibilities in this field. As an immediate matter, we’re now moving to close this acquisition in coming weeks. We’ll then start work right away on bringing AdMob’s and Google’s teams and products together. This industry is moving fast, and we’re excited to be part of the race.”

Google SSL goes beta

Jenny Sanderson — Sun, 23 May 2010 13:33:14 +0000

Google have this week unveiled the beta version of their encrypted search engine, SSL, designed for international searches, the new service will give users the option of enhanced security if they are at all suspicious that their internet connection may be being accessed by third parties.

The encrypted version of the Google homepage can be accessed by adding a simple ‘s’ to the web address, users will then be taken to https://www.google.com. Popular PC magazine, PC PRO, have stated that national portals, such as our own google.co.uk have not yet been made available in their encrypted form.

The announcement to offer this encrypted search service last week, came following recent privacy concerns regarding Google’s Street View cameras which were unintentionally accessing open Wi-Fi connections. Writer at PC PRO Barry Collins, explained that it by encrypting the data between a user’s computer and Google’s servers it becomes “practically impossible for third parties to intercept search results.”

The encrypted search engine is not the first of Google’s services to have been encrypted as of late, following the encryption of Google’s e-mail service G-mail earlier this year. However, the search engine giants have assured users that their privacy will not be at risk when accessing Google services that they have not yet encrypted.

“To help avoid misunderstanding, when you search using SSL, you won’t see links to offerings like Image Search and Maps that, for the most part, don’t support SSL at this time,” explained the company’s software engineer, Evan Roseman, on the Google Blog. Users will still be able to access these services, but will not be able to see navigation for them.

“Also, since SSL connections require additional time to set up the encryption between your browser and the remote web server, your experience with search over SSL might be slightly slower than your regular Google search experience,” the blog warned.

If a user wishes to ascertain whether or not a Google site is encrypted they can do so by locating a small padlock symbol to the right of the Google logo.

Yahoo! and Bing gain more ground on Google

Andre — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:00:21 +0000

New figures released by ComScore have revealed that Yahoo! and Bing have had a good month of April as both companies have gained some ground on Google in the search engine war.

Yahoo’s market share increased by nearly 1 percent whilst Microsoft’s Bing continued to rise for the 11th month in succession.

There has been an ongoing debate amongst market analysts as to whether the rise shows the effects of the recent search deal between the two former rivals is now being felt or whether Yahoo’s gain was a result of the new features they have released for their news service.

According to tech analysts AFP, the new feature of Yahoo! News, which registers each view of a photo slideshow as a separate search query is the main reason behind the turnaround for Yahoo! as their share has rise by 0.8 percent in the last month, meaning that they now account for 17.7 percent of the lucrative search market.

ComScore, however, confirmed that these clicks are still valid as the Yahoo! News feature meets its “established criticism for counting search queries”.

“Both Yahoo! sites and Microsoft sites have experienced gains due in part to the introduction of new site navigation experiences that tie content and related search results together within several channels,” the internet research company explained.

“These features provide search results to users as they navigate through topical content.”

Google are still leading the pack of course as they hold a 64.4 percent share of the market.

But Google will be worried about the five year search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! as they have been losing ground against their closest rivals at an accelerating rate, dropping by 0.7 percent last month and 0.4 percent in February.

Google release Chrome 5 Beta

Andre — Thu, 13 May 2010 09:00:07 +0000

Google have been making steady inroads into the web browser market of last as their rivalry with Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla intensifies.

Chrome has managed to grab a 5 percent share of the browser market in just over a year and a half since its release in October 2008.

In its short life Google Chrome has undergone many updates and new versions as the company continue to add new features and optimisations.

They have now released their 5th version of the browser for beta testers with new claims of a bump in speed and other feature additions.

Google Chrome is already renowned for its speed so it will be interesting to see just how much faster it really is.

The speed of the browser may not be noticeable to your average web user but Google are claiming a speed jump of 30 to 35 percent over the last beta release on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks respectively.

When this is compared with the speed of the original Chrome browser from 2008 we can see that there has been an impressive 213-305 percent increase on the benchmarks.

There are some interesting new features in the browser too including browser preference sync in which the user can store themes, bookmarks, settings and history from their Google account.

It will also come with Adobe Flash support so there will be no need for the user to download it manually.

Google Chrome Beta 5 is available to download now from the Chrome website.

Google to launch e-book store to rival Apple and Amazon

Andy Russell — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:00:59 +0000

After having been locked in a long running court battle in the US regarding their plans to create an online library bigger than any other; Google have finally announced the release of their much anticipated Google Editions e-book store which will go live at the end of June or early in July.

The unique feature of Google’s e-book incarnation that differs majorly from Apple’s iBook store and Amazon’s Kindle store is that any e-books purchased from Google Editions can be used on any device, they are not tied to just one such is the case with the iPad for example. Google Editions e-books can be used on a personal computer or any web-enabled mobile giving them an appeal that is not present with their rivals.

Google claim to have scanned over 12 million books which would give them a significantly larger selection then Apple or Amazon although the search giants have not disclosed how much they will charge per book as of yet.

The announcement is bad news for their competitors especially Amazon who currently control 60% of the e-book market.

A US judge is still deciding as to whether or not it is legal for Google to digitise so many books, the case is likely to end in Google having to pay an £83 settlement to the Authors Guild who issued the original lawsuit in 2004.

After the announcement was made by Google last week their shares jumped by $6.51 to $512.88 per share.

Google Chrome gaining on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer

Andre — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:33:39 +0000

Recent results for internet browser use read well for competitors of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with Google and their Chrome browser coming off best.

Although Internet Explorer 8 has approximately a quarter of the market all to itself Netmarketshare are reporting that 59.95% of the market are currently using any version of the browser, meaning that quite a significant number of users are still using older versions of Microsoft’s browser.

Nothing much has changed for Mozilla and their Firefox browser who have stagnated at 24.59% of the market share, the same amount they have had for the last year.

The biggest increase comes from Google’s Chrome browser which has made quite a significant jump in the past year from 1.79% to 6.75% of the market share.

Internet Explorer has been on a steady decline since 2002 but it has undergone its most significant drop in users more recently losing 8% of their market share since April 2009.

It is no coincidence that this loss of users coincides with the vastly increased awareness of alternative browsers for internet users. The main cause of this was the new addition of the ‘browser ballot’ in Europe which has forced Microsoft to give users of their Windows operating system a choice of which browser they would like to use.

Other factors that have pushed the decline in users of Internet Explorer include Google’s rigorous advertising campaign for their Chrome browser and the rise of popular new upstart browser Opera.

This news will not be received well by Microsoft, expect to see some sort of update to their browser soon as they attempt to hold on to the market share that they still have left.

Google acquires 3D desktop technology company BumpTop

Jenny Sanderson — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:02:01 +0000

Google seem to be getting ahead of themselves quite recently as their promise to buy “one new company a month” seems to have had a slight increase as they have now purchased their seventh start-up in five months.

News circulated yesterday that Google have now purchased BumpTop, an application for transforming your computers desktop into a rather cool 3D interface.
This very innovative technology is quite a coup for Google as there does not seem to be much like it on the web and we can be almost certain that it will be improved with input from the Google team.

BumpTop was founded by Anand Ayarawala who’s main premise behind the technology was to make a computer desktop more like a real work desk, i.e. an organised mess.

The technology uses three dimensions, icon piles and photo pin-ups to give the look and feel of a real life work station.

BumpTop has only been available for the PC for just over a year and was only recently launched for the MAC so it is a relatively young company. They have announced that after one short year it will not be available for purchase after June 1st so anyone that would like to try it out would be well advised to do so soon.

Google have not said what their plans are for BumpTop as they are not so much about desktops and operating systems but more about the web. It is likely that they will shutdown the current service of BumpTop completely and use the technology perhaps for the Chrome browser or maybe for the Android mobile application.

Apple purchase virtual personal assistant application Siri

James Oliver — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:00:41 +0000

Apple has announced that they have acquired Siri, a mobile application that acts as a virtual personal assistant.

The application claims that it is able to do everything a human personal assistant can (within reason of course) from locating or booking the nearest restaurant to ordering a cab.

Siri is only available in the US at the moment and is exclusive to the iPod Touch and the iPhone.

The app is free and allows users to type or even speak a question into the device, “where is the nearest Chinese restaurant?” for example, and Siri will then use an algorithm to deliver the most relevant that would be determined by the users location and other relevant factors that may effect the answer.

Siri is considered one of the leaders in the field of ‘voice search’ technology and represents quite a coup for Apple who are obviously competing with Google who have their own voice search technology.

The language capabilities and voice processing technology that the acquisition of Siri will give Apple should provide them with adequate ammunition to get one up on Google in their battle for supremacy in the smart-phones market.

Apple have not yet revealed whether or not they will be integrating Siri with their own products or whether Siri will continue live as its own entity.

As with their other acquisition this week (chip maker Intrinsity) Apple did not reveal how much they paid for Siri but whatever the figure it will surely be worth it if it propels Apple to the head of the market for voice technology.

Google announce new feature for search of similar pages

Andre — Sat, 01 May 2010 09:00:09 +0000

Having innovated the way in which we search on the internet, Google are looking to create a different approach to web search query results.

The company announced that it will be rolling out an all new way for web crawlers to view web pages similar to the ones that they are searching for.

Official post on Google’s blog outlined the lateral approach of this new feature, in which users will be able to find other web pages that are related to the subject of their search.

Software engineer at Google, Doantam Phan used the example of a charity aid search to illustrate how the new feature will work. Many benefactors are likely to have been searching for appropriate charities of late in order to donate relief to Chile or Haiti or any other charity of their choice.

Phan showed that when searching for a specific charity (Direct Relief International) was used in Phan’s example, the results would of course bring up the URL for the specific organisation that you have searched for, but if the user clicked the new ‘similar to’ box it would then link to a listing of other organisations that are accepting donations similar to that which the user has searched for.

“We’ve offered a ‘Similar’ feature on results for a while now as a way to discover new, useful sites, but it hasn’t been too visible,” Phan wrote in the blog entry this week.

“Since we’ve been continuously improving this feature and we think it’s really useful, we’re now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently.”

“Starting this week, for queries where similar sites are likely to be helpful, we’ll display a list of ‘Pages similar’ at the bottom of the results page,” he said.

It seems a more refined version of the current ‘related searches’ that are often displayed at present on Google search results pages.

Yahoo! gains exclusive Premier League Highlights

Matt Thomas — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:31:06 +0000

Yahoo! have scored a major coup in their battle with Google and Microsoft by landing an exclusive deal with the Premier League to feature highlights of the games online in a deal that will run for customary 3 year period until 2013.

Under the terms of their agreement Yahoo! will feature 5 minute highlight reels of each match on their UK website Yahoo.co.uk, the company will also have the rights to syndicate the content to other parties.

The deal is a major coup for the company as it puts them right at the epicentre of online football content in the UK, an extremely lucrative marker that puts Yahoo! in a rather enviable position.

The search engine based company will also be able to create targeted advertisement packages when they are distributing their content to major brands.

European Managing Director for Yahoo!, Rich Riley, stated: “The acquisition of Premier League rights shows how serious Yahoo! is about providing the best in video content for our both our users and advertisers.

“Sport is a passion for our target audiences and the Premier League rights are a key part of our efforts to build on Yahoo!’s reputation for engaging, original content.”

The agreement should push Yahoo! to further their online presence and capitalise on their recent profitability.

The deal will end BSKYB’s recent three year deal with the Premier League that proved to be a great success for the company, Yahoo! hope to achieve a similar sort of popularity with their version of the highlights.

Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, commented: “The way fans access Barclays Premier League action is growing ever more diverse and sophisticated. The online highlights package is an important medium for supporters of all our clubs to be able to follow match action.

“Yahoo! has a great reputation and presence in new media and we are pleased to welcome them as a Premier League rights holder. I am sure they will do a fantastic job in reaching the widest possible online audience over the next three seasons.”

Along with their recent announcement of a healthy profit for the year so far, this announcement would appear to have put Yahoo! on course for a very good year.