Technology Info

Google Inc. says Bell Canada Inc. is breaking Canadian telecommunications law by slowing certain internet traffic, and is urging the CRTC to take action against the company.

“Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a reasonable form of network management. Google respectfully disagrees. Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use,” the company wrote in a 15-page submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which was made public over the weekend.

“From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral.” (link)

Bowing to criticism from privacy groups, Google added a “privacy” link to its homepage over the holiday weekend, even axing its own name from the page’s copyright notice so as to keep word weight in check.

Google is (in)famous for its adherence to a spartan aesthetic, and nowhere is that design sensibility more apparent than on the Google home page. The goal is to keep the word count low, which means that only the absolutely most important words—like “advertising programs” and “business solutions”—make the cut. But “privacy”? Nowhere to be found. Hey, you can always Google for it!

This, in fact, was Google’s response when it was criticized earlier this year by privacy activists who claimed that California law required a link to the privacy policy on the home page. It was also the response given a bit later when it emerged that Google was bucking the common practice of the Network Advertising Initiative (a trade group that includes Yahoo and Microsoft) by not including the notice. Google had nothing to hide, it said, it just cared deeply about the purity of the page. (link)

A recent collaborative study between Google, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and IBM offers new insight into how many people surfing the web are doing so safely. According to the report, a clear majority of users (some 59 percent) are using the latest version of their preferred Internet browser—but that still leaves 40.1 percent who aren’t. That’s a troublingly high number for anyone working in IT security, given that virtually all (89.4 percent) of the vulnerabilities reported in 2007 were remote exploits. Not all of these exploits specifically targeted the web browser, but it’s become the target of choice for an increasingly large percentage of all attacks. Proper browser security is therefore of paramount concern. (link)

Digital and electronic media consumption are up across the board. Teens spent an average of 12.5 hours online in a single week, up from 10.7 hours last year. Tweens are up to 6.5 hours from 5.2 last year. While teens said that e-mail is for “old people” two years ago, Youth Trends’ study cites e-mail, IM, and casual gaming at the top of the online activities list. YouTube, Facebook, Google, and MySpace are popular destinations for teens, while Webkinz, Nick, YouTube, and Disney adorn the bookmark lists of tweens.

Teens are watching slightly more TV this year, up to 11.9 hours per week from 11.6 last year. Strangely, tweens spent even more time than teens in front of the television with 12.2 hours per week, up from 11.8 last year.

Mobile phone ownership is up from 65 percent last year to 73 percent among teens, and 26 percent of tweens also owning a phone. Text messaging is cited as the primary activity, though it’s feasible that owning a phone may also contribute to time spent on the Internet with the new surge in mobile phone sites. (link)

The 2007 rise of Storm was a harbinger – this new kind of social malware is continuing to grow and increase in sophistication. New, widespread malware botnets which share characteristics with Storm include Srizbi, Bobax and Kraken/Kracken. IronPort is tracking these botnets and implementing protective measures against their infection mechanisms. In addition, IronPort monitors and identifies new threats designed to exploit software vulnerabilities (such as those found in application like Adobe Flash Player), as well as website redirects, Google exploits, and spam attacks that take advantage of “Out of Office” autoreplies to validate email addresses and even hijack corporate mail servers.

For most of the last thirty years, spam has been an annoyance, created by individual amateurs. Those days are over. As Storm shows, today’s extremely organized, technically savvy, well funded malware efforts are comparable in scale to legitimate software vendors. Talented engineering teams have now moved to the dark side, and are a threat to every organizational network and individual with an email account and Web browser. (link)

Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information” over the Web, YouTube parent Google said in a legal response to the suit.

The response, reported by the Associated Press, was filed late Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Google says the threat comes from Viacom’s attempt to make “carriers and hosting providers” liable for what people post. Google, by the way, has said this suit will only be resolved in court

Viacom originally filed its lawsuit last year and filed an amended version last month. In the more recent version, the AP reported, Viacom said video-sharing site YouTube consistently allows popular, copyrighted material to be posted to its site, including from Viacom-owned MTV and Comedy Central. Viacom said that it has identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips on YouTube and that the site has done “little or nothing” to stop the copyright infringement, the AP reported. (CNet)

China has launched an investigation into online mapping services by Internet giants including Google and Sohu in an effort to protect state secrets and territorial integrity, state press said.

According to Min Yiren, vice head of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, authorities hope to get rid of online maps that wrongly depict China’s borders or that reveal military secrets, the People’s Daily said Monday.

The government began the investigation into the problematic maps in April and will continue it until the end of the year, the report said.

Min cited five areas of concern, with the redrawing of China’s borders and placing disputed territory outside the nation the top priority, it said. (link)

Yahoo Inc. plans to make its website a social hub by hosting applications from other online services, part of the Internet pioneer’s effort to spawn more advertising opportunities.

“We are going to rewire the entire experience at Yahoo to make it social in every dimension,” Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer, said Thursday at a “Web 2.0″ conference that drew a crowd of more than 1,000.

The more open platform copies a concept that already has been embraced by Internet search leader Google Inc. and a variety of online social hangouts, including Facebook Inc. and News Corp.’s MySpace.com. (link)

I so wanted googlepoo.com. I guess I will have to live with my wordpress domain.
Techcrunch

Google Inc.’s first-quarter profit climbed 30 per cent to surpass analysts’ predictions in a performance that alleviated some of the economic worries that have hammered the Internet search leader’s stock this year.

The news, released after the stock market closed Thursday, lifted Google’s recently drooping shares more than 11 per cent.

The Mountain View-based company said it earned US$1.31 billion, or $4.12 per share, during the first three months of the year. That compared with $1 billion, or $3.18 per share, in the first quarter of 2007.

If not for expenses to cover stock given its employees, Google said it would have made $4.84 per share. (link)