According to Google there will be a live press release hosted online from San Francisco at 9:30 AM Pacific time today. Amit Singhal from Google was aloof saying only that they:
“…will take you through an under the hood look at Google Search, share our vision and demo some of our newest technology and features.” [CNET]
[Inside Search Live Event – Google]
Eli Pariser makes a great case for why the Internet, as we know it today, is not the information free-for all that we all believe it to be. Editors, the gatekeepers of the past, have been replaced by algorithms that have been designed to tailor Google search results and Facebook News Feeds to your tastes and interests, while leaving out ideas that are uncomfortable but important. Great video from TED2011. Comment.
One of the more interesting wikileaked cables to come out in the few weeks is a cable from 2008 detailing prisoner files from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. In the document released last week it names the courier who we tracked to find Osama, and his working location, namely Pesahwar and Abbottabad.
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Hacking is usually an ‘underground’ sport, something nerdy Eastern Europeans do in their mother’s basements. The only time a hacker would come together to meet another hacker would be on an IRC channel. Not so anymore, with conventions like Defcon, Blackhat, and CanSecWest.
CanSecWest has an interesting contest. A hacking contest. The targets are the most common browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. A new feature this year is the addition of smartphone hacking: Apple iOS, Windows Phone 7, Google Android, and BlackBerry OS. In total there is $125,000 in cash prizes. Another cool aspect of the competition: if you hack the computer running the target browser, you get to keep the laptop.
Like any good contest, there are the favorites. Charlie Miller, a software analyst from Baltimore has won the contest 3 times before. In 2009 Miller took down Safari running on an Apple in 10 seconds! He scored $10,000 and a laptop for his troubles. “Nils” (The contest allows anonymous entries) – a German computer science student, won last year, cracking Firefox, Safari, and Chrome in less than 10 minutes. In 2009, Nils broke the encryption for IE 8 the day before it was released, netting a new Sony laptop and $5k. George Hotz, the 21 year old who broke the Playstation 3’s copy protection (not to mention being the first person to ever jailbreak the iPhone) will be competing this year.
The biggest challenge this year is Google’s Chrome browser. Chrome runs in a ‘sandbox’ mode in Windows (basically insulating bugs in Chrome from affecting the underlying Windows system.) Google has put up $20,000 if someone can break Chrome’s sandbox mode in the first day.
Contests like this just aren’t cool in the computer security world. They provide vendors with information on how to improve the security of their products. When someone hacks a browser/device they also share technical information on how they did it with the contest organizers, TippingPoint. Details on the hacks aren’t released to the public until the vendor has time to fix the bug.
Pwn2Own runs during the CanSecWest conference, being held in Vancouver CA between March 9-11 2011.
J.C. Penney, one of the oldest and most trusted institutions of commerce, was recently caught bumping up their search rank in Google by using deceptive tactics.
Google has been around since 1998, and ever since they came online, people have been trying to exploit its algorithm to make it so their pages appear first on Google’s listing. Have you ever gone to a website and seen a bunch of terms at the bottom of the page, or sometimes hidden (only visible when you highlight them with the mouse)?
The site was trying to artificially bump its search ranking. Google has “robots” that search the web and extract pertinent words. Loading your site up with descriptive words is one of the oldest tricks to try to get in to Google’s index. Google keeps their search algorithm secret, but they do disclose some information about how their bots work.
J.C. Penney exploited Google’s search algorithm through site links. Lets say you’re selling tires. If a bunch of automotive-related websites link to yours, Google takes that in account and assume that your site’s content is highly relevant and deserves a high rank. The more sites that link to yours, the better.
Google is smart enough to rank sites in terms of overall importance, so a link from someone’s tiny blog might give you +2 points, but if a site like Walmart links to you (they’re big, and get a lot of traffic) – you’ll get +10 points. The more points, coming from relevant sources, means a higher rank. You’re probably thinking “who cares if you’re #1 vs #2 on Google’s search ranking?” but the exact position matters. A lot. Researchers have done studies that say most people are proportionately more likely to click on the #1 link. If you’re a business as big as J.C. Penney, millions of dollars are at stake.
J.C. Penney decided to hire a shady SEO (search engine optimization) company to register thousands of websites whose sole purpose was to link to J.C. Penney. The SEO company would fill these sites with commonly-used search terms, and links. For an example, here’s a link to a Huffington Post “article” that was published before the Super Bowl:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/what-time-superbowl-start_n_819173.html
See how most of the “content” is short, simple paragraphs which seem to be factoids (at best)? This site is designed to be indexed by Google so that someone searching for “What time does the Superbowl start?” will be directed to the HuffPo page. This is way more advanced than J.C. Penney’s stunt. (Their pages are so un-interesting they’re not even worth linking to, unless you like looking at lists of household goods.) This HuffPo page isn’t really an article, it’s not really a “listicle” … its a page designed to drive traffic to the site.
Simple tricks like this have been vetted by Google since its inception. Since Google relies on bringing pertinent search terms to people, they really frown on stuff like this. A couple of years ago BMW in Germany decided to post a bunch of invisible text on their website (terms like “cars, auto, which car is the best?” etc) and Google de-listed them. They removed BMW from any and all Google searches! (BMW changed their site and got re-listed.) Every couple of months someone will come up with a “super ninja SEO technique” to drive traffic to websites. Generally any “super ninja SEO technique” will work for a couple of weeks, until Google changes up its algorithm. (Look in the “computer” section of Craigslist, and you’ll find all sorts of ads from people with “super secret SEO techniques.” It’s mostly bullshit.)
In response to J.C. Penney’s deceptive tactics, Google changed its search algorithm. Sites that used techniques like J.C. Penney lost a ton of traffic. In fact, Google came out and said that approximately 12% of their search rankings have changed in the past week. That’s a ton of upheaval!
Here’s another thing: Web users should be aware of how search rankings are calculated. The number one link in Google might not be the best result for you. If you run a website, its really deceptive to get traffic like this. As someone who buys a lot of stuff online, be wary of links!
Google really knows how to make people like them and shill their products at the same time. They have setup a Google Voice line just for Santa so you can have him call someone and leave a message. I’m sure it’s aimed at convincing kids Santa really does exist but I have a suspicion that about 90% of these calls will be directed at adults and be slightly naughty, though this is tough to accomplish.
The basic idea is that you enter your name, the recipient’s name and then select various messages to include. I sent one to the wife and she chuckled.
Since having only one Santa related product tie in isn’t enough for a company of their size, Google has also entered the highly lucrative Santa tracking game.
More info at the Google Voice Blog.