Our thoughts on the European Commission review: Google

Google - European Public Policy Blog, Tuesday, November 30, 2010

At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first by providing the best possible answers as quickly as possible - and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. However, given our success and the disruptive nature of our business, it’s entirely understandable that we’ve caused unease among other companies and caught the attention of regulators. Today, the European Commission has announced that they will continue to review complaints about Google's search and search advertising. We respect their process and will continue to work closely with the Commission to answer their questions.

So that everyone understands how we approach search and ads ranking, we thought it would be helpful to state clearly the principles that guide our business:

• Answering users' queries accurately and quickly is our number one goal. Sometimes the best, most relevant answer to a query is our traditional “ten blue links”, and sometimes it is a news article, sports score, stock quote, video, or a map. Today, when you type in “weather in London” or “15 grams in ounces” you get the answers directly (often before you even hit Enter). In the future, we will need to answer much more complex questions just as fast and as clearly. We believe ads are information too, which is why we work so hard to ensure that the advertisements you see are directly relevant to what you are looking for;
  
  
• We built Google for users, not websites. It may seem obvious, but people sometimes forget this -- not every website can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be website owners who are unhappy about their rankings. The most important thing is that we satisfy our users.
  
  
• We are always clear when we have been paid for promoting a product or service. Before we launched Google, many search engines took money for inclusion in their results without making that clear to users. We have never done that and we always distinguished advertising content from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and types of content, we promise to continue to be transparent about payments.
  
  
• We aim to be as transparent as possible. We provide more information about how our ranking works than any other major search engine, through our webmaster central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube channel. We give our advertisers information about the ad auction, tips on how to improve their ad quality scores, and the ability to simulate their bids to give them more transparency. And we’re committed to increasing that transparency going forward. At the same time, we don’t want to help people game our system. We do everything we can to ensure that the integrity of our results isn’t compromised.

Our final principle: the only constant is change. We’ve been working on this stuff for well over a decade, and in that time our search technology has improved by leaps and bounds. Our results are continuing to evolve from a list of websites to something far more dynamic. Today there’s real-time content, automatically translated content, local content (especially important for mobile devices), images, videos, books, and a whole lot more. Users can search by voice -- and in a variety of languages. And we’ve developed new ad formats such as product listing ads and new pricing models such as cost-per-action. We cannot predict where search and online advertising will be headed, but we know for sure that they won’t stay the same. By staying focused on innovation we can continue to make search even better -- for the benefit of users everywhere.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Udi Manber, Vice President, Engineering

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Wikileaks Attack: Not the First by th3j35t3r

PC Magazine, By: Neil J. Rubenking, 11.29.2010

When WikiLeaks released another collection of secret U.S. government documents this weekend the site came under attack from a hacker styled th3j35t3r (the jester). In announcing the hit, th3j35t3r tweeted "TANGO DOWN – for attempting to endander the lives of our troops, 'other assets' & foreign relations". A now-deleted tweet clarified that the WikiLeaks hit was a simple denial of service attack. F-Secure's Chief Research Officer, Mikko Hypponen, had this to say about the attack.‎

"It was a weird case," said Hypponen. "Everybody assumed it was some large-scale Distributed Denial of Service attack, but the guy himself says it's not. It's a protocol-based attack from a single source." Hypponen explained that WikiLeaks recovered by changing its hosting providers. At the time of the attack they were hosted in France. Now they're using two different servers hosted by Amazon's cloud, one of which is physically in the United States.

Asked if this type of attack could take down any arbitrary site Hypponen said "We just don't know. The guy isn't giving any details. But over the past months he has been quite successful taking down pro-Jihad forums and such. When he claimed responsibility for WikiLeaks I believed him right away. He had both the knowhow and the motive."

According to Hypponen, th3j35t3r characterizes himself as ex-military and likes to use military terms. His e-mail address is a Russian Hotmail account, but anybody could register for such an account. Hyponnen noted that it might be harder to get details about a Russian account

If you believe that WikiLeaks should be designated as a terrorist organization you may consider th3j35t3r's actions patriotic, even heroic. But if his attack techniques become widely known any web site could conceivably be a target.

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Millions still without pay after NAB tech glitch

heraldsun.com.au, Lema Samandar From: AAP November 27, 2010

MILLIONS of people are still without their pay as National Australia Bank works through the weekend to fix a computer glitch that's delayed payments.

The problem began on Wednesday due to an error in NAB's data processing and still has not been resolved.

Customers now face the weekend without access to their money as the bank sought to reassure them that payments will be made soon.

NAB spokesman George Wright said the bank was trying to solve the problem as soon as possible but could not say when all of its accounts would be updated.

"Some of the delayed processing has now occurred,'' Mr Wright said.

"But there's still a large amount to get through and we're working on that now and we will continue to over the weekend.''

Commonwealth Bank, ANZ Bank, Westpac, HSBC and Citibank have all confirmed that some of their customers' transactions have been affected by the errors in NAB's data processing.

HSBC said transactions to other banks, payroll deposits and direct debits have been affected.

It said NAB clears payments for HSBC in Australia, as well as other banks.

Mr Wright said NAB was working with the other banks to fix the problem and also giving its own customers its full support.

"A lot of people are frustrated and angry about this and understandably so - it's been very inconvenient for a lot of people,'' he said.

"But the really important thing for people to remember is that payments will be made.

"There are some payments that need to go to other banks that have been delayed, so we're getting those moving.''

NAB opened 120 branches across the country today to give customers access to cash and its call centre is in overdrive.

The bank also said it won't leave customers out of pocket through any penalties as a result of the technical glitch.

"If they are (charged any fees) they should contact us and we will put the situation right,'' Mr Wright said.

Consumer group Choice says while the big four banks are under pressure because of competition, their payment system should also be scrutinised.

"As everyone knows, if you're making a payment to the bank it vanishes from your account at the speed of light,'' Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said.

"But if someone is making a payment to you, that can get held up over weekends, public holidays.

"I don't know what computers take public holidays but obviously the banks are much quicker at taking than they are at paying out and that is in their commercial advantage.

"We have to query that and ask why is it so and why must it be so.''

National Australia Bank (NAB) is Australia's biggest bank

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President’s special staff’s Twitter account hacked

Dina Indrasafitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 11/25/2010

The Twitter account of one of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s special staff was sending bizarre messages Thursday morning.

Andi Arief, the President’s special staff for social aid, usually uses his Twitter account to announce the latest information on natural disasters such as the recent eruptions of the Mt. Merapi volcano and the tsunami in Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra.

However, a tweet posted “four hours ago” when the Post accessed Andi’s account at around 9 a.m, announced a “Tsunami in Jakarta tomorrow”. Some of the other messages on the Twitter account included, “kkkkkkk” and “your fate is in my hands”.

Akuat Supriyanto, a close acquaintance of Andi Arief, said on his own Twitter account that Andi’s account had been hacked.

“…There are a lot of untrue messages being written by the hacker…” Akuat posted.

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Nokia Pledges Easy Payment for Phone Apps in Indonesia

Jakarta Globe, Shirley Christie | November 23, 2010

Jakarta. Struggling mobile phone giant Nokia plans to allow cellphone operators to bypass credit cards and deduct the cost of downloaded applications directly from users in Indonesia next year.

A Nokia E75 mobile phone is being used in this file
photo. Nokia say that distribution of phone apps will be
conducted via 'operator billing' which allows even prepaid
users to buy. (AFP Photo/Lehtikuva/Antti Aimo-Koivisto)

Dubbed “operator billing,” it makes it easier for software vendors to sell applications directly to users through Nokia’s Ovi Store without the hassle of credit cards.

Nokia also promises a minimum 60 percent revenue share for developers, considerably more than many current arrangements.

During a press briefing in Jakarta last week, Kenny Mathers, head of developer relations for Forum Nokia Asia Pacific, said the company’s Ovi Store was the only mobile application store in the world to offer operator billing.

With low credit card penetration often cited as a barrier to customers buying mobile applications in Indonesia, Nokia said operator billing should eliminate that hurdle, even for prepaid users, since the cost of applications can be deducted directly from a user’s mobile phone credit.

“Our research shows that two out of three people choose to pay with operator billing instead of credit card billing,” Mathers said.

Nokia began the program with the launch of the Ovi Store in May 2009. It has deals with 99 cellphone providers in 29 countries to offer operator billing.

However, the company refused to say which cellphone operators it would be working with in the Indonesian market or give an exact date for the launch of the service here.

Local software start-up Swamedia, which currently offers its Shopping Planner and two other applications for free through the Ovi Store worldwide, hopes operator billing will allow it to generate online revenue.

Deded, Swamedia’s account manager, says the company is currently just seeking global recognition on the Ovi Store but will soon start charging customers for its applications.

For Nokia, giving developers a bigger share of the revenue pie is a way to try and reverse the ongoing slide of its Symbian operating system, which has seen an 8 percent market share decline in the last year, largely due to the rise of Google’s open source Android system.

In the third quarter of 2010, Symbian had a 36.6 percent market share worldwide, compared to 25.5 percent for Android.

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A bridge to the cloud: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers

Google Blog, Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:10 AM

Tens of millions of people have moved to Google Docs because it’s 100% web: it provides real-time collaboration in the browser, with no software to install, manage or upgrade. Of course, we know that many more of you still use Microsoft Office, because until recently, there weren’t many tools to help you collaborate and share with others. Now there’s more choice.

To help smooth the transition from Office to the cloud, my teammates and I founded a company called DocVerse, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Over the last 9 months, we’ve been hard at work moving the DocVerse product to Google’s infrastructure. We’ve also renamed it Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Today, we’re pleased to take the next step towards a public launch and make it available to early testers.

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now we’re bringing them to Microsoft Office.

All you need is a Google account, and you’re ready to go. That’s it!

If you’re a Google Apps for Business customer interested in joining our preview program, please sign up here. If you’re not, don’t worry- at launch, Google Cloud Connect will be available free to everyone, including consumers.

Posted by Shan Sinha, Group Product Manager

Indonesians Beat Slow Disaster Relief by Tweeting

Jakarta Globe, November 22, 2010

Jakarta. Tech-savvy Indonesians are using social network Twitter to beat the government in delivering relief to disaster victims, after a tsunami and volcanic eruptions stretched official aid capacity.

Website pages from Twitter.com are displayed on computer
monitors in this file photo. Indonesians are increasingly using
social networking Web services Twitter and Facebook to transmit
up-to-date information about disaster relief. (Bloomberg
Photo/Chris Ratcliffe)

Organizing effective aid management has proved challenging for authorities in remote regions or where infrastructure has been destroyed by giant waves or scorching ash clouds.

But when a community-based group near the erupting Mount Merapi volcano, which has killed over 300 people, sent a message, or tweet, on Twitter that food was piling up in the next town and there were no vehicles to pick it up, over a dozen cars lined up to deliver it within 10 minutes.

"It was so fast I almost didn't believe it," said Akhmad Nasir of Jalin Merapi, an information network built by local communities living on the slopes of Mount Merapi on Java island.

Started as a radio community in 2006 to monitor Mount Merapi's activity, Jalin Merapi has helped shelters that are unable to receive government aid by deploying about 700 volunteers who report by tweeting specific aid needs.

The number of Indonesians using Twitter is multiplying every year.

Twenty-one percent of the country's Internet users visited the site in a June survey by digital market research firm comScore, the highest proportion in the world compared with 12 percent for the United States.

The country, where 45 percent of the 240 million population is under 25, is also the third biggest user of social networking site Facebook.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, director of disaster risk reduction at the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said the government had established communication systems for volunteers and soldiers but it could not cover all of the 700 refugee centers scattered around the foot of Mount Merapi.

"Little shelters often cause problems in aid distribution. To equally divide aid to 700 different shelters is difficult, almost impossible," he said.

The shelters have harbored over 200,000 refugees since the volcano began spewing ash and lava in late October.

Jalin Merapi's Twitter account saw more than 12,000 tweets this month alone, linking 33,500 followers.

"Info please, which shelters need baby clothing and porridge, blankets, we are on the way," said one such tweet by follower dkurniawan.

Jalin Merapi's Nasir said the most unforgettable moment was when the community announced they needed help to provide meals for 30,000 people, and the meal was ready in four hours.

"I think what we experience now shows that solidarity in a time of crisis does exist," Nasir said.

Reuters

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Social Media 'One Part' of Google Strategy: CFO

Jakarta Globe, November 21, 2010

Internet giant Google on Sunday said social media was "absolutely" part of its strategy and would be embedded in "many of our products" but played down its rivalry with networking icon Facebook.

The Google logo can be seen on bags during a press
conference on Thursday. Google CFO Patrick Pichette
said on Sunday that social media is only one facet of
the company's potential remit. (AFP Photo/Johanes
Eisele)

Chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said Google was at the center of an exploding digital economy where computer power was "relentlessly, dramatically increasing" and innovation was crucial to survival.

"Search is clearly the core product of Google but many of our other products are having phenomenal trajectories," Pichette told Australian public television.

"The first driving principle of Google is in fact not money -- the first driving principle of Google is understanding that the Internet is changing the world," he added.

Pichette said Amazon and Apple were "winning" in the new technology race and Microsoft was a "formidable" competitor, but played down as media hype suggestions that Facebook was Google's next big rival.

"The digital world is exploding and it has so many chapters -- it has cloud computing, it has mobile, it does have social, it has searches, it has so many elements. Within that... social (networking) is just one chapter," said Pichette.

"Yes, absolutely it will be part of our strategy, yes it will be embedded in many of our products. But at the same time remember it's one chapter of an entire book."

It follows Facebook's launch of a next-generation messaging service this month, seen as a major challenge to Google's Gmail and fellow web-based email providers Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Microsoft's Hotmail currently has the most users, 361.7 million as of September, according to online tracking firm comScore, followed by Yahoo! with 273.1 million and Gmail with 193.3 million.

Pichette said Google's Android platform for mobile devices was a "fantastic opportunity" for the company, powering 200,000 handsets every 24 hours.

Android users also performed searches 50 times more frequently than people using other mobile devices, with obvious benefits for Google, he added.

"Now that everybody has a smartphone everybody searches, so these few hundred engineers (who developed Android) have accelerated (a market that) would have taken 10 years to develop into a few years," he said.

"My payback is absolutely unreal."

Agence France-Presse

Chinese supercomputer named world's fastest

Google/AFP

BEIJING — China overtook the United States at the head of the world of supercomputing on Sunday when a survey ranked one of its machines the fastest on the planet.

Tianhe-1, meaning Milky Way, achieved a computing speed of 2,570 trillion calculations per second, earning it the number one spot in the Top 500 (www.top500.org) survey of supercomputers.

The Jaguar computer at a US government facility in Tennessee, which had held the top spot, was ranked second with a speed of 1,750 trillion calculations per second.

Tianhe-1 does its warp-speed "thinking" at the National Centre for Supercomputing in the northern port city of Tianjin -- using mostly chips designed by US companies.

Another Chinese system, the Nebulae machine at the National Supercomputing Centre in the southern city of Shenzhen, came in third.

The United States still dominates, with more than half of the entries in the Top 500 list, but China now boasts 42 systems in the rankings, putting it ahead of Japan, France, Germany and Britain.

It is not the first time that the United States has had its digital crown stolen by an Asian upstart. In 2002, Japan made a machine with more power than the top 20 American computers put together.

The supercomputers on the Top 500 list, which is produced twice a year, are rated based on speed of performance in a benchmark test by experts from Germany and the United States.

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Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns

Yahoo News, By ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI, Associated Press – Sat Nov 13, 10:21 am ET

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – An official with Saudi Arabia's communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn't conform with the kingdom's conservative values.

The official says Saudi's Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site Saturday and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it.

He says Facebook's content had "crossed a line" with the kingdom's conservative morals, but that blocking the site is a temporary measure.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam and religious leaders have strong influence over policy making and social mores.

Pakistan and Bangladesh both imposed temporary bans on Facebook this year.

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China's Internet market will always be open: official

English.news.cn 2010-11-08

BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- Vice director of the Information Office of China's State Council Qian Xiaoqian said here Monday that China's Internet market will always be open.

He made the remarks when addressing the opening ceremony of the fourth U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum.

The Chinese government will continue to improve its policies, regulations and laws and follow related WTO rules, to provide a "stable, transparent and predictable" investment environment for foreign enterprises, Qian said.

He said China sincerely welcomes American enterprises to participate in China's reform and opening up, and to share in the opportunities coming from the Internet industry's development in China.

The forum, co-hosted by Microsoft Corporation and Internet Society of China, will focus on Sino-U.S. exchanges and cooperation in such areas as cloud computing, cyber crimes and online intellectual property rights protection.

Over 180 officials, business people and scholars from China and the United States are expected to attend the forum.

The forum was launched in 2007 and had been previously held in Seattle, Shanghai and San Francisco.

Editor: Tang Danlu

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Myanmar's Internet 'under attack' ahead of election

RNW, 4 November 2010 - 7:01am

A massive cyber attack has crippled Internet services in Myanmar ahead of Sunday's election, IT experts and web service providers say, raising fears of a communications blackout for the vote.

Internet users in the military-ruled country have reported slow connections and sporadic outages for more than a week, and some suspect the junta may be intentionally disrupting services to block news flowing out.

Web service providers have blamed the troubles on outside attacks.

"Our technicians have been trying to prevent cyber attacks from other countries," a technician from Yatanarpon Teleport Co. told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"We still do not know whether access will be good on the election day," he added.

A technician from private web provider RedLink Communications Co. said there was still intermittent loss of Internet connection.

"The technicians are trying to fix it.... We cannot tell exactly when it will be back to full service," he said. "We don't know the source of the attack yet."

Experts say Myanmar's Internet system has been overwhelmed by a flood of incoming messages known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

US-based IT security firm Arbor Networks says the main state-owned Internet provider Myanmar Post and Telecommunications "suffered a large, sustained DDoS attack disrupting most network traffic in and out of the country."

The onslaught was "several hundred times" more than enough to overwhelm the country's terrestrial and satellite links, it estimated.

The motives for the attack were unclear, but "large-scale geo-politically motivated attacks -- especially ones targeting an entire country -- remain rare," Arbor Networks chief scientist Craig Labovitz wrote in a blog posting.

Some Internet users believe the authorities are intentionally slowing services ahead of Sunday's vote, the first in 20 years in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

"Although they said the connection has been attacked, it's hard to believe. I think they have been doing it intentionally for the election day to delay news reaching the international community," said Kyaw Kyaw, a 25-year-old university student in the main city Yangon.

The polls have been widely criticised by pro-democracy activists and Western governments as being aimed simply at prolonging military rule under a civilian guise.

Foreign journalists and election monitors are not being allowed into the country for the election.

During monk-led protests in 2007, Myanmar's citizens used the web to leak extensive accounts and video to the outside world, prompting the regime to block Internet access.

Connections have also been slowed down on politically significant dates, such as the August 8 anniversary of a mass political uprising in 1988.

In September of this year, the websites of Myanmar exile media organisations were temporarily crippled by DDoS attacks on the third anniversary of a crackdown on the "Saffron Revolution" monk-led protests.

Even in normal circumstances, the web's reach outside the major cities of Yangon and Mandalay is severely limited.

Just one in every 455 of Myanmar's inhabitants were Internet users in 2009, based on statistics from the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency in Geneva.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders describes Myanmar's legislation on Internet use, the Electronic Act, as "one of the most liberticidal laws in the world", with online dissidents facing lengthy prison terms.

Turkey lifts YouTube ban… but the ban will probably be back any day now

Geek.com, Nov. 2, 2010 (2:15 pm) By: John Brownlee

Back in May of 2008, YouTube went black in Turkey, after a video uploaded to the online video hosting site was deemed insulting to the founder of nation, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Ever since then, anyone who lives in Turkey has had to go to extraordinary lengths to access the site.

Google’s always stuck to its guns when it comes to Turkey. Although they could have just deleted the offending video and opened back up for business, Google recognized that it was a slippery slope, deleting content deemed offensive by sovereign governments.

Interestingly, it seems that YouTube is again accessible to every connected Turk after the offensive video in question was removed. What’s so interesting about this story though is that Google didn’t capitulate with the Turkish government’s request to purge the video: rather, the videos were taken down for a copyright violation.

Here’s Google’s explanation on the matter.

• “We’ve received reports that some users in Turkey are once again able to access YouTube…We want to be clear that a third party, not YouTube, have apparently removed some of the videos that have caused the blocking of YouTube in Turkey using our automated copyright complaint process … We are investigating whether this action is valid in accordance with our copyright policy”

What Google’s saying here is that Turkey may have tried to get its way in regards to the offending video by submitting an onerous copyright complaint issue, resulting in the video’s takedown. Google’s skeptical of the motives of whoever submitted that complaint, and if they find there was no copyright violation, they intend on putting the video back up… even if that leads to Turkey banning YouTube all over again.

This is an interesting standoff. I wonder how it will play out. One thing’s for sure: Google seems resolved not to budge when it comes to political censorship on YouTube. God bless ‘em.

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