A couple of snippets concerning Google’s new Chrome browser:
Pop-ups not shown, but Advertisers billed?
It seems like Chrome’s new Pop-Up hider still loads the Pop-Up ads, but doesn’t present them to the viewer.
This is somewhat different to how traditional Pop-Up blockers work, in that they actually prevent the ad from loading. Our understanding of that approach is that this means the Advertiser wouldn’t be charged, as their ad is not loading.
The situation with Chrome may well be different, as the ad is being loaded but not shown, which could lead to advertisers still being charged for Pop-Ups that no one will ever see.
For Pop-Up haters that’s fine, but if true and if Chrome grabs a significant portion of the Browser market, then this could well lead to changes in advertising methods.
Google promotes Firefox, oops!
In a very public spirited gesture, it seems that Google (via YouTube at least) is still advertising Firefox, even after the launch of Chrome.
Whether this is an oversight on Google’s part, or a requirement of their agreement with Mozilla we don’t know. Is Google still the default search engine bundled with Firefox installs, as per their agreement (which was re-negotiated earlier this year)? If so, how much longer will this arrangment last?
Thanks to Raja of MrFeedback.net for the heads up about the Firefox ad in Youtube.
This is a guest post contributed by Raja of MrFeedback
We have seen privacy introduced in Internet Explorer 8 (beta 2 version) & Google Chrome, and Firefox has recently announced that private browsing will be incorporated into their browser in version 3.1 – currently you can get private browsing mode by downloading the Stealther 1.06 plugin available through Download.com, and there are similar solutions available from Mozilla’s add on website.
The concept behind Privacy mode is simple – any record of your browsing history is discarded once you close the browser session in IE or Google Chrome. Firefox plan to take this feature a few steps further and will have:
- no autofill for passwords
- all cookies will be discarded after browsing
- all downloads in Download Manager will be discarded after browsing
- Unlike IE, you won’t even be able to tell if you’re surfing in Private Mode. IE has a neon indicator to announce the activation of private mode. Firefox will keep the fact that you’re surfing in private mode, well..private. Nice feature.
Private surfing is useful, despite the obvious concern that it will assist people to do things on the internet which are questionable. As internet shopping becomes the norm, it will enable people to keep gift purchases, for example, and other activities private. It’s good that browsers are installing this feature, despite it inevitably being misused by a percentage of people.
I’d love to hear any comments or feedback on Privacy mode and Browser security in general.
Raja Devanathan
Founder of MrFeedback.net
If you would like to guest post or have a post/review written, please get in touch via our Contact page. Standard rates for paid posts/reviews can be found on the Advertising page.
Just a few days after public release, vulnerabilities in Google’s Chrome browser have already been publicised. Ramifications of an attack could range from an application crash to remote malware installation.
The first vulnerability was found on Wednesday by researcher Aviv Raff, who discovered that the browser was open to a highly-publicised ‘carpet bombing’ attack first found in Safari. The Safari hole was patched earlier this year, but because Chrome uses Apple’s WebKit software, the flaw has reappeared in the Google browser.
A proof of concept page was published demonstrating how an attacker could embed malicious code on a web page and then use it to conduct a remote malware installation with a separate specially-crafted Java applet.
Then researchers Rishi Narang and JanDeMooij posted separate reports of a vulnerability in the browser’s chromium.dll component that was exposed through the browser’s URL bar. The flaw can be made to cause an application crash, though neither report mentioned the possibility of remote code execution.
The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom.
That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason. Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”
Meanwhile, the judge denied Viacom’s request that Google turn over YouTube’s source code.
It seems that far more data is in danger of being transferred than is required to satisfy Viacom’s core stated concern, which is to understand the popularity of copyright infringing vs. non-infringing material. Viacom has asked for much more than that, opening up the possibility of their taking legal action to sue individual users (or at least use the threat of a lawsuit) who have watched ‘copyrighted’ material on YouTube.
Internet users will now have an easier time finding sites that rely heavily on the popular Flash video format.
Adobe Systems, owner of Flash, has released a customised version of the Flash Player software that will allow Google (and other search engines) to see certain elements of Web pages embedded with Flash content in the same way a human would.
Search Engines currently have a difficult time “seeing” non-text formats such as Flash, which can lead to sites that make heavy use of the technology being ‘penalised’ in terms of their indexing.
Adobe’s new tool will help crawlers navigate dynamic Flash pages more easily. Google’s crawlers, for instance, will be able to click buttons along the way and remember the information for the index.
Google is already using the new tool and Yahoo plans to soon. Adobe also plans to extend support to other search engines.
Google has signed a deal to build a series of research and development offices at a Nasa lab in Silicon Valley.
The search giant will lease 1.2 million square feet of office space at Nasa’s Ames Research Center in Google’s home town of Mountain View, California.
The 40-year lease will include a US$3.2 million annual payment from Google which will be adjusted according to market rates.
Nasa plans to use the money for improvements and maintenance costs at the Ames Research facility.
Read more…
Google has pledged to adopt a more open approach with the formula for its hitherto fiercely guarded search algorithms.
Udi Manber, Google’s vice president of engineering, made the announcement on a corporate blog as part of a “renewed effort” to open up the company’s secrets.
Manber claimed that competition and attempts to prevent abuse have been the main reasons for Google’s historic secretive stance.
Google has kept its search ranking formulas a closely guarded secret to make it more difficult for people to “game the system”, he wrote.
Read more…
Search engine giant Google could be interested in going geothermal, according to Israeli newspaper reports.
Google is apparently in discussions with an Israeli firm called Ormat Technologies, which already has a geothermal plant set up in the Nevada desert in the USA.
Geothermal energy, which harnesses energy generated by heat under the Earth’s surface, from the atmosphere and from oceans, is becoming an ever popular alternative energy source.
It involves pumping water underground, leading to increased rock permeability, which therefore allows for the release of more heat.
Read more…
Google has added capabilities for 10 new languages to its Google Translate service.
The addition of Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish brings the total number of languages to 23.
The service now has the option to translate text and web pages, as well as perform cross-language searches between any two languages in the list.
Jeff Chin, a product manager for Google, wrote in the company’s official blog: “For example, we now support Chinese translation to/from any of our languages (e.g. Chinese to French).
Read more…
Google has launched a hosted security service for enterprise customers in Australia.
The hosted service, called “Google Web Security for Enterprise”, protects corporate Web and e-mail users from viruses, spyware, malicious Web sites, and offers hosted e-mail archiving services.
The service offers a choice of cheap security features. The option of Google Message Filtering (e-mail filtering) is billed at AU$3.65 per user per year, while Google Message Security (scanning of inbound and outbound e-mail plus messaging controls) is charged at AU$14.63 per user per year.
Read more…
Google has expanded its web-based security application which allows administrators to set policies that limit user access to sites and monitor browsing habits.
Google Web Security for Enterprises, which also provides malware protection, is based on software acquired by Google when it purchased Postini last year for $625m.
Previously, using Google Web Security for Enterprises outside a company network had required users to manually log-in through a virtual private network.
Read more…
Senior Google executives have publicly expressed interest in a potential advertising partnership with search engine rival Yahoo.
The comments from chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin follow a two-week shared advertising trial which many analysts saw as an attempt to derail Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo.
The two-week test saw Google supplying selective advertisements served to Yahoo search engine users.
Read more…
Security experts at Trend Micro have warned of a Google AdWords phishing attack designed to steal sensitive information.
Victims of the scam receive an email notification informing them that their last AdWords payment has not been successful and asking them to update their payment information.
The link displayed in the email body appears to be legitimate, but is actually a compromised site hosted in a number of different countries including Romania, Brazil and Canada.
Trend Micro believes that Google’s huge popularity has led hackers to intensify attacks on the company’s websites, following successful attacks on Google Calendar.
Read more…
Google’s report on the first quarter of 2008 shows an unexpectedly strong start to the year for the search giant.
The company logged US$1.31 billion in profit between January and March on total income of US$5.19 billion.
The US$5.19 billion in revenues marks a 42 percent increase from the first quarter of 2007, and a seven percent rise on the last quarter of 2007.
The majority of Google’s income came from its own properties. Sites owned by Google accounted for US$3.4 billion, making up 66 percent of the company’s total revenues.
Read more…
Google’s ever active search bots, which scour the Web constantly for new pages, have begun a new, more active phase of their indexing jobs.
In a blog post Friday, Jayant Madhavan and Alon Halevy of Google’s crawling and indexing team said the company has begun an experiment in which its indexing software experimentally enters text in Web site forms to see what previously undiscovered pages may appear.
“In the past few months, we have been exploring some HTML forms to try to discover new Web pages and URLs that we otherwise couldn’t find and index for users who search on Google,” they wrote. “This experiment is part of Google’s broader effort to increase its coverage of the Web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines.”
Read more…
