Microsoft: Google Makes it Hard for People to Control Their Own Information

Microsoft's VP for corporate communications Frank X. Shaw argues that "the changes Google announced make it harder, not easier, for people to stay in control of their own information." Microsoft, instead, takes a different approach according to Shaw: "We work to keep you safe and secure online, to give you control over your data, and to offer you the choice of saving your information on your hard drive, in the cloud, or on both."

The ad itself focuses strongly on how Google "cloaks" the changes to its service in language like "transparency," "simplicity," and "consistency," yet, in Microsoft's view, Google only cares about one thing: "making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search, send, say or stream while using one of their services."

After pointing this out, Microsoft then notes that if Google's thirst for data "rubs you the wrong way," Microsoft will be there for you with products like Bing, Hotmail, Office 365 and Internet Explorer.

This is definitely Microsoft's most aggressive public campaign against Google, a company that has been slowly invading Microsoft's turf in quite a few areas, including the highly lucrative office productivity business. In 2010, Microsoft ran an anti-Google campaign by trying to convince Google Apps users to switch (back) to Microsoft's products.

Just a few months ago, such a campaign could have easily backfired. Now, however, with the arguably unpopular changes that Google has made to its service and its incessant pushing of Google+ to the point where even the Daily Show's Jon Stewart is making fun of it, consumers may just be open to some alternatives to Google's products.

Here is the ad:

Given that the company now offers a wider range of deals in these cities, it will also allow its users there to take its personalization quiz. This ensures that those who can't get enough deals on massages can continue to get those offers and those who prefer not to get yet another offer for an aromatherapy session can make sure they get other offers instead.

Google is clearly positioning Google Offers as more of a platform for third-party services and using its personalization service as a way to increase the conversion rates for these deals. The service is currently available in 38 cities and chances are that Google will continue to add more cities to its deal aggregation service over time.

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Once installed, the Wajam extension integrates the company's own search results on the Google search results page and also takes over part of the sidebar to present you with videos, photos and recommendations from your friends from sites like Yelp and Amazon. You can also tweak which social networks you want to be included in your search.

The Wajam team, of course, couldn't stand still and just let the whole Google+ controversy pass it by, so they created the following video that shows you how it works and how it compares to the "don't be evil" tool:

Related posts:

Our original review of Wajam from 2011.

Does “Search Plus Your World” Actually Improve Your Search Results? Nope

I got a demo of the service last week and was quite impressed with how clearly the Parse.ly team understood what publishers and writers want from a modern stats package. Not only is the software far easier to navigate than Google Analytics, but thanks to the company’s smart semantic tools, it’s also far more useful for publishers.

Unlike other tools, Parse.ly, for example, understands what your posts are about and can extract keywords and other metadata from them. Thanks to this, you don’t have to rely on your writers’ strict adherence to a tagging taxonomy. Instead, if your are a political site, for example, you can quickly get a glanceable view of how your posts about Newt Gingrich have been doing lately, who wrote the most popular posts about him and then allocate resources accordingly. In the same way, you can see what keywords are driving traffic on your site right now and what the trends for these stories look like.

In contrast, most regular analytics tools today don’t even make it easy for you to see who wrote a story.

The data is compiled in real-time and during its beta test with publishers like The Daily Caller, The Next Web, The Atlantic and a number of other high-traffic sites, Parse.ly analyzed over 4 million URLs and over 4 billion pageviews.

Parse.ly also takes a look at the aggregate data across its network and provides its users with global trends from the sites in its network. In addition, it can also look at social trends, though as the team pointed out to me, having access to its own, more focused data-source helps Parse.ly provide publishers with more timely and far less noisy data.

Not for Small Publishers

Before you get too excited, though, it’s worth noting that Parse.ly isn’t a tool for small publishers. The cheapest plan costs at least $499 per month. That’s pretty pricey compared to the free Google Analytics package or the relatively cheap dedicated real-time stats packages like Woopra, Clicky or Chartbeat, which also offers a dedicated (and similarly priced) package for newsrooms, though without most of the semantic features that Parse.ly offers.

Update: Reading over Google's numbers again, I don't think they actually mean that 60% of Google+ users engage with the service daily. Here is my follow-up.

In comparison, Facebook, which has about 800 million users, says 50% of its users come back every day.

Those numbers are surely also driven by the fact that any Google user who signs in to any of the company's services sees those large red numbers with new notifications in the black navigation bar.

In addition, Gundotra also noted that there are now over 1 million business pages on Google+.

Google, of course, isn't resting on its laurels. The Google+ has, according to Gundotra, shipped one new feature every single day since the launch of the service.

"We're Already Working on Something Better"

Google is, he says, always working "on improving authentication, and try out different things every now and then. We're working on something that I believe is even better, and when that's ready for a public trial we'll let you know."

Google has now also updated the login page with virtually the same message. As Balfanz notes on Google+, the team doesn't want people to start relying on an unsupported feature.

The web, of course, lit up earlier today when this service first appeared, thanks to a Google+ post by a non-Google programmer who stumbled upon the feature by coincidence. It's not often, after all, that somebody discovers an unannounced Google feature on the public web.

The interest in this service shows, though, that there is clearly a market for this, which will hopefully motivate Google to launch an official product with similar functionality in the near future.

This new log-in mechanism will be especially useful when you are using a public computer where you can't be sure that somebody hasn't installed a keylogger or a similar device.

The feature was first described by Walter Chang on Google+, though it's possible that this tool has been available for longer.

How it Works

Here is how it works: Google presents you with a one-time use barcode on the screen. You scan the code and your mobile scanner app will recognize that it's a link and take you to your mobile browser. Google will then ask you to type in your password on your phone and to confirm that you really want to log in on the computer, too. Once confirmed, your desktop browser will receive notice from Google that you are good to go and open a Gmail session for you.

Caveats

Now, obviously, as the good folks on HackerNews point out, if you are on a computer you don't fully trust, you can never be 100% sure that whoever installed a keylogger on the machine isn't also doing other nefarious things while you are logged in.

Still, this is definitely safer than just typing your password on a computer that isn't yours and may even add some extra security for those who sometimes have to work on unsecured WiFi networks as well.

Update: Google has posted a reaction to this on Google+ now. Google's Nelson Mattos: "We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved." 

Mocality's Accusations

Mocality's evidence for all of this? Besides the calls, the company caught two waves of scraping activity on its site – one with IP addresses based in Kenya and one with IP addresses linked to Google (http://74.125.63.33/). It then served a special phone number to visitors from these suspect IP addresses and it never took more than a few hours before the company would intercept calls from Indian call-center employees who identified themselves as calling on behalf of Google.

You can find all the details in Mocality's blog post about their allegations.

Something Ain't Right

Does any of this really make sense, though? Google is investigating the allegations and promises to have a statement soon, but something just doesn't feel right here. The only evidence that really ties any of this back to Google is the IP address that is linked to Google in Mountain View.

The Evidence

IP addresses can be spoofed and over on Hacker News, some folks are arguing that the Google IP address could either stem from the scammers using Google Translate or Google's App Engine or the Google OpenSocial proxy.

Google, given its brand recognition, is probably invoked by more online scammers than anybody else.

On the other hand, though, that all seems like a lot of work for what seems to be – assuming that Google wasn't involved – a pretty standard scam operation. I doubt most scammers would go through the trouble involved here. Also, the fact that a call center in India was involved here either means this was a very elaborate scam, or more evidence for Google's involvement in this. 

Just a Scam Without Google's (Direct) Involvement?

Google, however, generally isn't in the business of selling business listings and domain names – though its affiliates sometimes are. This also seems like a rather labor-intensive operation for very little profit (at least on the scale Google operates on).

What could Google's role in all of this be then? My best guess: somebody went rogue at Getting Kenyan Businesses Online or maybe in a Google-affiliated call center. Google's partners aren't "Google" and while the company will have to take responsibility for this, chances are that whereever this scam originated from was not under direct control of the company.

This guest post was written by Alexander Burger. He is a teen himself and would love to join Google+, if only Google let him. Alexander usually blogs at Phone-Fritz.com.

Smartphones have spread like wildfire in the past few years and more and more adults, children, and especially teens, have them. With Internet-capable devices in hand, teens can do more than just text or tweet… the revolution of what one has on them now has grabbed hold and is sticking pretty hard. Teens are probably the most sought-after group of consumers. Television ads, billboards and websites all trying to grab their attention… and teenagers being teenagers – they soak it all up. One day it's Sperry Topsiders [editors note: don't feel bad, I had to look that one up, too…], the next it's Nikon cameras, all based on who wears what, what shows where, and who speaks in such a way. Let's just say, if Jersey Shore moved to Connecticut, our tourist business would go through the roof.

But Google doesn't buy that. It doesn't see how you need to snatch up the socialites and get within the walls of schools and football fields. Does the G-Giant think Farmville flourished because of my mother's addiction to the game? No. Did Words with Friends get big because the scholars in our society decided to spend their time unscrambling letters to hit that triple word tile? No. Teens rule this terrain, teens decide whether you win, or lose, and if Google wants its social venture to come out golden, they have to play the game, they have to let them in.

So where does this leave our lack-luster social network, the one that Google keeps trying to back up with ideas like "Search Plus Your World?" It leaves them with questions about when they will open the gates and let the sea of younger students surge in and get a hold of all that popularity and more importantly, profitability.

Google+, to its credit, is a slick take on social, and one that could really be preferred over Facebook, but at the moment… it's a vacant wasteland collecting dust, pictures of cats, and absolutely no kind of human activity.

The Temporary Solution

If you just want to see what your regular results without search+ would look like, you can just use the toggle in the top right corner of the screen. This selection isn't sticky, however, and Google will just revert to Search+ the next time you come back to Google to search (note: you will only see this toggle once Search+ is enable for your account).

If you want to switch the default to non-personalized results, though, you have to do a tiny little bit more work.

Going Nuclear

Step 1: head to the search settings menu by clicking on the cogwheel in the top right corner of the screen and click on "search settings"

Step 2: Scroll down a bit and look for the "Personal results" section. Select "Do not use personal results."

Step 3: Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on the blue "Save" button.

Search+ is now off by default, but you can still use the regular toggle to turn it on for this specific search session again.