Surprise! Google violates its own policies to promote Chrome
Don’t be evil… be hypocritically evil!
Google, the company that has been fighting against paid links and “thin” content, seems to be behind a campaign that’s generating both on behalf of its Chrome browser. File this under “what were they thinking.”
Aaron Wall wrote about the campaign today at SEO Book, spotting how a search for “This post is sponsored by Google” brings back over 400 pages written apparently as part of a Google marketing campaign.
We’re checking with Google for confirmation that the company is behind the campaign, but expect a response to be delayed, as Google’s PR department, like much of Google, is off today. But it certainly appears to be Google-backed.
Google is increasingly relying on advertising to try to win over converts to its spyware-laden browser, Chrome, which is built on top of open source software originally derived from the KDE Software Compilation (KHTML). Google’s “ChromeOS” and Chromebooks aren’t doing so well, but Google has successfully convinced millions to download Chrome (the browser) by relentlessly hyping it on its web properties and bundling it with other downloads (like Google Earth).
Though Google is undoubtedly hoping that Chrome’s market share will continue to grow at Mozilla’s expense, it decided against parting ways with the nonprofit software maker recently, choosing instead to renew an agreement that will keep Google as the default search engine in Firefox for a few more years. But we believe Google’s executives didn’t sign off on the agreement out of the kindness of their hearts. They did so because they didn’t want to see Microsoft’s Bing become the default search engine in Firefox. (Microsoft had apparently made an offer and had put money on the table). Microsoft, of course, happens to make its own browser – Internet Explorer. But it has been working hard to integrate Bing into Firefox recently.
Google places misleading ads designed to steal Yelp’s traffic on its mobile search engine
The Monster of Mountain View continues to engage in anticompetitive behavior:
If you search for “Yelp” on Google from your mobile phone the top paid result, even above the organic result to Yelp.com, takes you to Zagat. I am only seeing this on mobile searches. While it is a common practice for companies to advertise against their competitors’ names in search advertising, in this case it is Google itself which is bidding for that search term and taking the top spot. A classy move.
TechCrunch has a screenshot of the ad. The link is titled “Yelp”, but it goes to Zagat, which was recently purchased by Google and is now a subsidiary.
Because AdWords ads appear above what are known as the “organic” search results (which is a misnomer, there’s no such thing as “organic” search results), the real Yelp will always appear below the fake Yelp link as long as Google continues running its ad for Zagat. And of course, Google can run its Zagat ad forever… because Google can give itself as much advertising space as it likes.
TechCrunch notes that Yelp could fight back by buying its own Google ad. But then it’s just forking over money to a competitor.
What Google is doing here is a perfect example of why it is a menacing monopoly, and should be boycotted.
Google swallows Zagat Ratings
Two years after it tried and failed to buy Yelp, Google has reached an agreement with Tim and Nina Zagat of the eponymous Zagat Survey to acquire their company:
“With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry,” said Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president responsible for the tech giant’s efforts in local, maps and location services, in a blog post.
“Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering — delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the Monster of Mountain View reportedly paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $125 million.
Zagat has been in business for more than thirty years. It was created in 1979 to organize and aggregate restaurant reviews. For many years, its guides were sold as books.
In the late 1990s, Zagat actually had a partnership with Microsoft, which integrated its restaurant guide into its Expedia Streets 98 mapping program. (Streets later became Microsoft Streets & Trips; Expedia was ultimately spun off as a separate company.)
Now Zagat is just another cog in the Googleplex.
Pretty sad that its founders decided to sell out instead of remaining independent.
Google announces its biggest acquisition ever: It wants to buy Motorola Mobility
The Monster of Mountain View is trying to make a monster deal:
In a bid to strengthen its mobile business, Google announced on Monday that it would acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, the cellphone business that was split from Motorola, for $40 a share in cash, or $12.5 billion.
The offer — by far Google’s largest ever for an acquisition — is 63 percent above the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday. Motorola manufactures phones that run on Google’s Android software.
Considering that the feds recently initiated an antitrust investigation of Google, this is a rather aggressive move on Google’s part. $12.5 billion is nearly three times what Microsoft, RIM, Apple, Sony, and others put down to buy the patent portfolio of the now-defunct Nortel Networks. Google had been bidding separately for the portfolio, but it decided to pull out as the price went over $4 billion, leaving its competitors victorious.
Google will be pushing hard for this deal to go through. They are clearly ready to sweet-talk regulators for as long as it takes to win approval. They stand to pay a huge financial penalty if they can’t:
Google agreed to pay Motorola Mobility $2.5 billion if the deal falls through, a person familiar with the matter said. Motorola Mobility would pay $375 million if it decided not to sell to Google, the person said. Jennifer Erickson, a spokeswoman for Motorola Mobility, declined to comment on the breakup fee, as did Aaron Zamost, a spokesman at Google.
Motorola’s rivals – chiefly HTC and Samsung – might want to start rethinking their alliance with Google right about now. They’ve just been spurned.
Google may try to claim they are not aspiring to copy Apple’s business model, but such claims are laughable now considering the deal they announced this morning. There’s no way Google would pay such a premium for a phone manufacturer just to gain control of some patents. No, this is about Google entering the hardware business. Apple just took the top spot from oil giant ExxonMobil as the world’s most valuable company. Most of their revenue comes from selling hardware.
Google figures it can make a lot more money than it does now if it sells hardware and then serves up ads on the devices it sells. They want to exercise more control over the user experience. With Motorola Mobility, Google will be able to make its own phones, tablets, and dumbed-down laptop computers (Chromebooks). It is seeking to gain the power to dispense with partners and instead concentrate on building a fan club like Apple does.
Regulators should say no to this deal. They won’t, but they should. It’s bad for competition in the wireless industry and it’s bad news for user privacy and security.
Google wants its software running your home appliances, not just portable gadgets
Talk about a privacy-less future…
At its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google showed a sneak preview of its Android@Home project, which will extend the Android platform into household objects. That means some day in the future, you could control home appliances—your dishwasher, the heating system, the lights in your house—using your Android device as a remote control.
“Think of your phone as the nucleus that this all started with,” said Google engineering director Joe Britt in an interview. “We’re opening the platform up to everyone to do whatever they can imagine.”
There’s something to be said for the ability to turn on your parked car’s air conditioning before you get to it. But, practically, what’s the point of having a dishwasher or washing machine that can be wirelessly controlled? Without place settings or clothes to clean, there’s nothing for the devices to do. And the technology doesn’t yet exist for such appliances to load themselves. For that, we’d need human-like robots.
There’s obviously more potential when it comes to heating, cooling, and lighting. But controlling the utilities in a house from somewhere else in the world has serious privacy and security implications. Implications that have not been addressed, will not be easy to address, and don’t actually even make sense for Google to address. If Google took privacy seriously and didn’t capture data for its own use, it wouldn’t be able to profit. It would be moving the goalposts forward technologically, but it wouldn’t be making money. Spying is Google’s business model. It underpins search and advertising (Search/Analytics/Adsense), Gmail, Chrome and Android, and pretty much every other product it offers.
Google’s practice of collecting data and never deleting it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem that governments are not addressing. There’s been some action taken in the European Union, but almost none in the United States, where Google is based. It’s time for that to change before Google becomes any more powerful than it already is.
FSF reminds us that Google’s Gmail utilizes proprietary JavaScript
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), the leading organization working to protect the rights of Internet users and defend free software, posted a reminder for its members and supporters today about Google’s double standard when it comes to free software. Google may provide hosting for open source projects and contribute to the development of some free software, but the software that powers its own offerings is not free.
That includes the JavaScript that runs Gmail.
Because of the incredibly high percentage of Gmail-using free software supporters, we’re taking action to raise awareness about how to use Gmail without using proprietary software. We’ll also be working on longer term solutions, but the most immediate positive step to take is to stop running the proprietary programs.
Many people suggest that you shouldn’t use Gmail at all, because it means losing control over your data and privacy. We agree that this is a very important factor for you to consider when choosing how you will handle your email.
We are among those who suggest that Gmail shouldn’t be used at all due to privacy and security concerns. The fact that Gmail’s web interface is comprised of proprietary software is just another good reason not to do business with the Monster of Mountain View.
HubPages CEO: Google has a big, fat double standard
Paul Edmundson, the chief executive officer of HubPages, says a recent internal initiative to toughen Google’s search algorithm (nicknamed Panda) has punished legitimate sites with user-generated content (like the one he runs) as well as dubious content farms, while sparing Google’s own properties:
Google’s recent “Panda” update intentionally upends this ecosystem; it doesn’t just lower the rankings of individual pages that the algorithm deems “low quality” (however that may be defined by Google) but, as Google has said publicly, “low-quality [page] content [on the domain] can impact an entire domain.” This means that high-quality content hosted on open publishing platforms like HubPages and YouTube can be negatively impacted in their search rankings simply by hosting contributions of various quality on a single site.
HubPages has seen a negative impact from this change, but so far YouTube has not (Search Metrics Winners). One presumes Google isn’t treating its own affiliated sites differently than any other site, but YouTube’s open publishing environment makes low-quality content as prevalent as on any other moderated open publishing platform. Google shows over 13 million indexed videos on YouTube for lose weight (known spammy area) and over 10 million for forex (another spammy area). Apparently, Google’s Panda update has been punitive only to platforms other than Google’s.
Surprise, surprise… Google treats its own properties differently than it treats others. This has actually been going on for years, but Google is rarely taken to task for it. Most of the complaints that have been made about the practice have come from Google’s competition. As Google has entered an increasing number of markets over the years, it now has a great many competitors in many different areas.
Google’s practices wouldn’t be so detrimental if it wasn’t so close to being a monopoly. Sadly, it has become synonymous with the idea of search, even though it is hardly the best or most intuitive search engine out there, let alone privacy-aware.
Google CFO: “Everybody that uses Chrome is a guaranteed locked-in user, in terms of having access to Google”
Another week, another Freudian slip from a Google executive:
Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette noted that Chrome was being heavily invested in by the company because each user is a “locked-in”. “Everybody that uses Chrome is a guaranteed locked-in user, in terms of having access to Google,” was the actual quote.
LGB has said for years that the whole reason Google distributes Chrome is so it can more effectively spy on people. Google puts a lot of resources into constructing an appealing browser, based on open source software that they borrowed from KDE and other free software communities.
Then they put in their payload of spyware… which is proprietary (because if we could see how it works, we’d be able to see the extent of Google’s surveillance).
“Chrome OS” is all about taking the Chrome browser to the next level. If Google’s software is running the whole computer, everything a user does can be monitored by the Monster of Mountain View, and users can be quickly and easily exposed to new Google “services”. Pretty scary.
Towards the end of the call, a couple questions wondered if Google would be using Chrome as a way to alter search results or to introduce new products? This is a bit of a touchy subject since Google has been playing up Chrome as an “open” browser for the web (though technically it’s Chromium that is the open source version). None of the Google executives shot down these ideas and in fact, they played up these possibilities.
In other words, yes, Chrome could eventually be yet another way Google is following your movements online and using it to their advantage. Again, probably not the best way to answer those questions.
Not the best way to answer those questions? So they should be obfuscating their true plans and schemes? How can a tech journalist think that’s a good idea?
It’s good that they’re starting to be honest about their intentions, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. (Google’s execs seem to think the debate about privacy and security is over, despite the increasing attention they’re getting from governments and consumer watchdog groups).
Is Google spying on Twitter?
Lately, Google has been witnessing a mini-exodus of some of its best and brightest to younger technology companies in Silicon Valley, particularly Twitter and Facebook, which are smaller and less bureaucratic. Google’s attempts to stop younger companies from poaching its personnel appear to gotten more desperate, according to this report:
In at least one of the cases Google is said to have made a counteroffer before the employee even told Google they were considering an offer from Twitter.
We previously reported that Google had set up a special group to respond to these situations quickly, sometimes overnight. But we’ve never heard of Google making counter offers prior to the actual offer from Facebook or Twitter being made.
Multiple sources close to Twitter have said that someone with access to Twitter’s most confidential information, such as who they are interviewing for key executive spots, may be leaking that information directly to Google. In this case, Google may have acted on that information too quickly. And people at Twitter, say these sources, are steaming mad.
Twitter has long made the mistake of relying on Google for essential things like content delivery and document storage. (Famously, a few years ago, Twitter’s Google Apps account was compromised and information in it published by TechCrunch, the same blog that ran the report excerpted above).
Twitter should become self-sufficient and sever all ties with Google. There’s no reason for it to be in bed with the Monster of Mountain View.
Want proof that Android isn’t truly open? Here you go!
Once again, Google is trying to have it both ways:
During a keynote presentation at Google’s IO developer conference last year, Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra proclaimed that the search giant created Android in order to bring freedom to the masses and avoid a “draconian future” in which one company controlled the mobile industry. Looking past the self-congratulatory rhetoric, Android’s poor track record on openness is becoming harder to ignore.
The company revealed Thursday that it will delay publication of the Android 3.0 source code for the foreseeable future—possibly for months. It’s not clear when (or if) the source code will be made available. The decision puts Android on a path towards a “draconian future” of its own, in which it is controlled by a single vendor—Google.
The article goes on to deliver a scathing indictment of Google’s track record.
It really is worth reading all of the way through.
Android, as it presently exists, is *already* controlled by a single vendor, Google. The only reason that Android isn’t completely proprietary is that Google built it on top of a free software kernel and free software libraries. Otherwise, it would be, like Apple’s iOS.
As the Ars Technica article above makes clear, Google doesn’t care about providing timely access to source code… a central tenet of the free software movement. Google is only interested in free software to the extent that it can use it to grow its own empire.
That’s why Google hates the AGPL (Affero General Public License). The AGPL requires that an entity running free software over a network make the source code of that software available; it is identical to the regular GNU General Public License except for this clause.
The AGPL was written to prevent companies like Google from taking free software, making improvements to it, and using the improved software to deliver services using the SAAS business model, but refusing to give back to the community by releasing the source code of the improvements.
Unfortunately, only a small percentage of free software is licensed under the AGPL – although usage has increased since 2007, when the Free Software License released Version 3 of the AGPL. For instance, StatusNet and Diaspora (free software projects that replicate Twitter and Facebook’s functionality in a federated fashion) are both licensed under the AGPL.
