There is an economy of scale with the cooling systems. You can also purchase electricity more cheaply in bulk. You only have to pay once for the security system. And resources not in use by one client can be used by another client.
WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.
It shouldn't have been collected, and it was recognized as a privacy concern but they went ahead with it anyways. Google then lied about it by saying it was a "mistake" and "unintentional". They then asked the FCC to black out embarrassing findings that contradicted their public statements: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/
Like I said, it was not to collect personal data. That data was picked up as extra payload. The data was just part of an experiment to see what the distribution of traffic was like on WiFis these days. The data was never used for any commercial purpose. Everything in that article backs up what I said, except for the wild speculation on the part of the author. Just because it was transferred to the Oregon datacenter for storage doesn't mean it was used commercially. It was just in the engineers files. You say things like "embarrassing findings", when the fact was that they didn't want personal names released to the public.
Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.
Deleting it is just a matter of replicating the deletion.
Yeah, I sorry, but it is not that simple. In a huge system like Google's, thing are marked for deletion, and then overwritten later on when the space is needed. There is no point in zeroing out anything, since the data is all encrypted anyway.
The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.
I'm seeing this excuse a lot. That's quite a "mistake" to make.
So, you are saying that it was not a mistake? That they did it intentionally? That there was some motivation for them to, what was it, reveal status messages to peoples' contacts?
No, it was a stupid oversight. It slipped by.
I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.
Reference? I did a search for: "google safari 2009 2011 cookies" and didn't find what you are talking about.
You're not looking hard, or you are using the wrong search engine. Try, "google ftc focused on 2009 help page". It's all over the place.
And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.
Google might extract general trends from your information, to help guess what you might be searching for. But the actual information is disposed of fairly quickly. I think it's six months or so.
As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.
But governments, hackers, and misbehaving employees do.
Yeah, good luck breaking into a Google datacenter. You have no idea.
Welcome to the real world.
Well, duh, that was my entire point. In the real world Google is
Google now has a long history of disregarding privacy, and the WiFi sniffing is just one example. Other examples are not deleting email when requested by the user, the Buzz privacy fiasco, pervasive tracking (including forcing cookies on Safari via a loophole), and keeping data around for too long. Most of these problems have been addressed after public outcry, though the pervasive tracking is still there.
The WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.
Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.
The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.
I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.
And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.
As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.
Tax havens are an unfortunate fact of life. All big companies have to do it. Fix the loopholes and level the playing field. Don't expect individual company to drop their competitive edge when the other companies aren't.
Right, so, let me get this straight. Google is so clever, that two year in advance, in 2009, they wrote a help page, knowing that much later on Apple would introduce a bug in Safari that this web page could exploit.
THAT, is very impressive. It's amazing what a multi-billion dollars can do.
Well, try to come up with a search query line that does something like this: "all documents about Java but only those that relate to this case and do not reveal company secrets that are not relavant to the case".
It seems like previous forms of wealth are being exhausted. All the land in the world has already been discovered. The natural resources, like oil and precious metals, are being used up. Intellectual property is the new frontier, but unlike previous forms of wealth, IP is not backed by a physical entity. So, much the same way that inflation got out of control when we left the gold standard, so now are we seeing huge amounts of IP inflation. Simple, obvious patents are being granted value far above their actual worth.
I appreciate how much effort you put into this response. And I see your point. I can offer you only speculation on why this feature was implemented the way it was.
First of all, this is not a Facebook product. To get anything, even just a mundane internal change, into the source tree requires stringent code reviews. To get a change into a customer-facing produce with a profile as large as gmail, that takes a huge amount of work and effort. There would have been many meetings, arguing about how many pixels and what color and every possible thing that could go wrong. All focused one this one feature. So, rest assured, it was endlessly debated before it was added. This is definitely not a case of some solitary young programmer throwing a hack into the code.
I would also guess that it seemed pretty innocuous at the time. The thinking was probably, "Well, obviously we are not going to change the recipient fields without a positive action from the user, but what could it hurt to offer some suggestions one the side?" It's not like it was some active animation that grabbed your attention. It is just a Div that you can easily ignore. I, personally, have found it useful on many occasions, and I simply ignore it the rest of the time.
I concede your point that when it doesn't work, it can come across as an unwelcome encroachment on your intelligence by what should be a dumb tool.
It seems to come down to a fear that the simple tool will act on its own, and send things to people you did not expect because it is trying to be "helpful". In a world where AI is becoming evermore common, that fear is not so unexpected.
I can say, with a high degree of certainty, that automatically adding a recipient without direct action from the user is something that would NEVER EVER EVER intentionally happen in a Google product. Rest assured of that. But I certainly see how displaying a name that you definitely would not want in the recipient list is something that might make people anxious. I can only say that such an idea was so counter to the intentions of the programmers, that they assumed the users wouldn't think it likely either.
Yes, you got it right. Still. many people are unhappy about those features regardless of your personal opinion about them. Those people wanted to have nothing to do with this feature - even if it could have been advantageous to them. Exercise is good for people, but would you want an Exercise Police waking you up at 6am and forcing you to run a mile or two whether you like it or not?
Except this is more like a little message off to the side that says, "Were you going to exercise today?"
I understand that you object to it, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding the magnitude of your reaction.
When you start typing a name in the To: field, and gmail offers to autocomplete it, are you offended that gmail thought you forgot the name of the person you are sending email to?
No. Look at the operator. Not look at what it is operating on. Is it operating on primitive types? Then you know what it does. Is it operating on objects? Then you know it is just a convenient syntax for a well-known function name (e.g. "operator+).
Why do you people find this so hard to comprehend?
Let me get this straight now. Google is not actually adding any unwanted recipients, as you stated in your original post, but they are just suggesting, on the side, that you may have forgotten to include someone. Did I get this right?
And you are also suggesting that people will blindly take these suggestions, include the suggested recipients, and complain that they never wanted those recipients in the first place. Did I get that right?
And you are calling this a gmail killer.
Wow.
As far as why it is useful, it comes in handy when I hit Reply instead of Reply-All.
Or when an email thread drifts to a new topic and gmail reminds you of a coworker who also worked on that project with the rest of the people in the thread.
Or, I can just ignore it. I'm sorry that you lack the self-discipline to do this.
You can open an email in a new tab. Just click the standard little icon of a window with an arrow pointing out of it. If you are not sure which one it is, just hover over icons until you find the one that says, "open in new window."
If WP8 kicks off as all the experts are claiming, then you will see hotmail come back.
If I had mod points, I would mod this as "funny". Is that really what ALL the "experts" are claiming these days? I even went over to bing.com and asked about this. I am not seeing this overwhelming regard for WP8 that you speak of.
Yeah, no, this never happened. Gmail never started randomly adding "suggested" recipients to your emails. The most gmail will do is put a little comment on the side that says, "Consider CCing the following people." Gmail has never added recipients automatically.
What probably happened was that some people got confused about reply-all versus reply-sender, or they mis-clicked on something, or they got confused about how groups worked, so they complained about their misunderstanding publicly and it became a banner for the paranoid to pick up and run with.
Actually, Google is a lot better at protecting your data than you are. Google has no connection to FBI/CIA/TSA/MAFIAA/Obama. If those entities want your data, they need a warrant, and Google lawyers fight them every step to make sure there is just cause. If the data is in your house, they will just go there instead and take it. Who do you think is better at fighting legal battles, you or the Google law team?
Are for any other sort of unauthorized access to your email, good luck even getting into a Google datacenter parking lot, let alone the many many layers of physical security at the site. Even if you somehow managed to make it onto the datacenter floor, and somehow managed to figure out which of the millions of constantly shifting disk drives held the data you want, it wouldn't do you any good, since the data is encrypted and the keys are stored in a completely different, secure location. To steal the data from your home, one need only wait until you leave, then kick in the door and walk off with your PC.
Certainly they have done a few things that, with wild speculation and attention-whore media reports and tragically hip IT bloggers making crazy leaps of logic, could be considered as having the potential to be evil.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an economy of scale with the cooling systems. You can also purchase electricity more cheaply in bulk. You only have to pay once for the security system. And resources not in use by one client can be used by another client.
WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.
It shouldn't have been collected, and it was recognized as a privacy concern but they went ahead with it anyways. Google then lied about it by saying it was a "mistake" and "unintentional". They then asked the FCC to black out embarrassing findings that contradicted their public statements: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/
Like I said, it was not to collect personal data. That data was picked up as extra payload. The data was just part of an experiment to see what the distribution of traffic was like on WiFis these days. The data was never used for any commercial purpose. Everything in that article backs up what I said, except for the wild speculation on the part of the author. Just because it was transferred to the Oregon datacenter for storage doesn't mean it was used commercially. It was just in the engineers files. You say things like "embarrassing findings", when the fact was that they didn't want personal names released to the public.
Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.
Deleting it is just a matter of replicating the deletion.
Yeah, I sorry, but it is not that simple. In a huge system like Google's, thing are marked for deletion, and then overwritten later on when the space is needed. There is no point in zeroing out anything, since the data is all encrypted anyway.
The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.
I'm seeing this excuse a lot. That's quite a "mistake" to make.
So, you are saying that it was not a mistake? That they did it intentionally? That there was some motivation for them to, what was it, reveal status messages to peoples' contacts?
No, it was a stupid oversight. It slipped by.
I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.
Reference? I did a search for: "google safari 2009 2011 cookies" and didn't find what you are talking about.
You're not looking hard, or you are using the wrong search engine. Try, "google ftc focused on 2009 help page". It's all over the place.
And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.
Believe me, I'm even more baffled by your comment. Google hoards information, as their whole business is based on knowing as much as possible. I have no idea where you got this idea that Google likes to throw away data: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/google-keeps-your-data-to-learn-from-good-guys-fight-off-bad-guys/
Google might extract general trends from your information, to help guess what you might be searching for. But the actual information is disposed of fairly quickly. I think it's six months or so.
As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.
But governments, hackers, and misbehaving employees do.
Yeah, good luck breaking into a Google datacenter. You have no idea.
Welcome to the real world.
Well, duh, that was my entire point. In the real world Google is
Google now has a long history of disregarding privacy, and the WiFi sniffing is just one example. Other examples are not deleting email when requested by the user, the Buzz privacy fiasco, pervasive tracking (including forcing cookies on Safari via a loophole), and keeping data around for too long. Most of these problems have been addressed after public outcry, though the pervasive tracking is still there.
The WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.
Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.
The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.
I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.
And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.
As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.
Tax havens are an unfortunate fact of life. All big companies have to do it. Fix the loopholes and level the playing field. Don't expect individual company to drop their competitive edge when the other companies aren't.
Welcome to the real world.
Right, so, let me get this straight. Google is so clever, that two year in advance, in 2009, they wrote a help page, knowing that much later on Apple would introduce a bug in Safari that this web page could exploit.
THAT, is very impressive. It's amazing what a multi-billion dollars can do.
Well, try to come up with a search query line that does something like this: "all documents about Java but only those that relate to this case and do not reveal company secrets that are not relavant to the case".
Speaking of gold...
It seems like previous forms of wealth are being exhausted. All the land in the world has already been discovered. The natural resources, like oil and precious metals, are being used up. Intellectual property is the new frontier, but unlike previous forms of wealth, IP is not backed by a physical entity. So, much the same way that inflation got out of control when we left the gold standard, so now are we seeing huge amounts of IP inflation. Simple, obvious patents are being granted value far above their actual worth.
Step 5: One Man with One Sex Robot
I work for Google, and it does have a heart and soul. Google really is trying to change the world for the better.
I don't expect you to believe me, yet there it is.
Apple applied for the patent in 2000, probably as part of their Spotlight system.
Don't get me wrong, it is a terrible, obvious patent, but if you seek to invalidate it on prior art, you'll have to start looking earlier than 2000.
Apple applied for the patent in question in 2000. Google Desktop was released in 2005 or so. Apples Patent was also granted in 2005.
So, if you want to argue against it on prior art terms, you would have to look back before 2000. I think it should be invalidated on obviousness.
I used to be a real Apple fan, until they showed their true colors in the past year or so.
A real model. Now there's an oxymoron for you.
I appreciate how much effort you put into this response. And I see your point. I can offer you only speculation on why this feature was implemented the way it was.
First of all, this is not a Facebook product. To get anything, even just a mundane internal change, into the source tree requires stringent code reviews. To get a change into a customer-facing produce with a profile as large as gmail, that takes a huge amount of work and effort. There would have been many meetings, arguing about how many pixels and what color and every possible thing that could go wrong. All focused one this one feature. So, rest assured, it was endlessly debated before it was added. This is definitely not a case of some solitary young programmer throwing a hack into the code.
I would also guess that it seemed pretty innocuous at the time. The thinking was probably, "Well, obviously we are not going to change the recipient fields without a positive action from the user, but what could it hurt to offer some suggestions one the side?" It's not like it was some active animation that grabbed your attention. It is just a Div that you can easily ignore. I, personally, have found it useful on many occasions, and I simply ignore it the rest of the time.
I concede your point that when it doesn't work, it can come across as an unwelcome encroachment on your intelligence by what should be a dumb tool.
It seems to come down to a fear that the simple tool will act on its own, and send things to people you did not expect because it is trying to be "helpful". In a world where AI is becoming evermore common, that fear is not so unexpected.
I can say, with a high degree of certainty, that automatically adding a recipient without direct action from the user is something that would NEVER EVER EVER intentionally happen in a Google product. Rest assured of that. But I certainly see how displaying a name that you definitely would not want in the recipient list is something that might make people anxious. I can only say that such an idea was so counter to the intentions of the programmers, that they assumed the users wouldn't think it likely either.
Did I get this right?
Yes, you got it right. Still. many people are unhappy about those features regardless of your personal opinion about them. Those people wanted to have nothing to do with this feature - even if it could have been advantageous to them. Exercise is good for people, but would you want an Exercise Police waking you up at 6am and forcing you to run a mile or two whether you like it or not?
Except this is more like a little message off to the side that says, "Were you going to exercise today?"
I understand that you object to it, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding the magnitude of your reaction.
When you start typing a name in the To: field, and gmail offers to autocomplete it, are you offended that gmail thought you forgot the name of the person you are sending email to?
No. Look at the operator. Not look at what it is operating on. Is it operating on primitive types? Then you know what it does. Is it operating on objects? Then you know it is just a convenient syntax for a well-known function name (e.g. "operator+).
Why do you people find this so hard to comprehend?
Let me get this straight now. Google is not actually adding any unwanted recipients, as you stated in your original post, but they are just suggesting, on the side, that you may have forgotten to include someone. Did I get this right?
And you are also suggesting that people will blindly take these suggestions, include the suggested recipients, and complain that they never wanted those recipients in the first place. Did I get that right?
And you are calling this a gmail killer.
Wow.
As far as why it is useful, it comes in handy when I hit Reply instead of Reply-All.
Or when an email thread drifts to a new topic and gmail reminds you of a coworker who also worked on that project with the rest of the people in the thread.
Or, I can just ignore it. I'm sorry that you lack the self-discipline to do this.
You can open an email in a new tab. Just click the standard little icon of a window with an arrow pointing out of it. If you are not sure which one it is, just hover over icons until you find the one that says, "open in new window."
Google is pushing the envelope on browser functionality, and openly publishing all their findings. Some browsers cannot or will not keep up.
If WP8 kicks off as all the experts are claiming, then you will see hotmail come back.
If I had mod points, I would mod this as "funny". Is that really what ALL the "experts" are claiming these days? I even went over to bing.com and asked about this. I am not seeing this overwhelming regard for WP8 that you speak of.
But if you have such a big problem with the UI, why not just point your own mail program at Google's IMAP interface?
Yeah, no, this never happened. Gmail never started randomly adding "suggested" recipients to your emails. The most gmail will do is put a little comment on the side that says, "Consider CCing the following people." Gmail has never added recipients automatically.
What probably happened was that some people got confused about reply-all versus reply-sender, or they mis-clicked on something, or they got confused about how groups worked, so they complained about their misunderstanding publicly and it became a banner for the paranoid to pick up and run with.
Actually, Google is a lot better at protecting your data than you are. Google has no connection to FBI/CIA/TSA/MAFIAA/Obama. If those entities want your data, they need a warrant, and Google lawyers fight them every step to make sure there is just cause. If the data is in your house, they will just go there instead and take it. Who do you think is better at fighting legal battles, you or the Google law team?
Are for any other sort of unauthorized access to your email, good luck even getting into a Google datacenter parking lot, let alone the many many layers of physical security at the site. Even if you somehow managed to make it onto the datacenter floor, and somehow managed to figure out which of the millions of constantly shifting disk drives held the data you want, it wouldn't do you any good, since the data is encrypted and the keys are stored in a completely different, secure location. To steal the data from your home, one need only wait until you leave, then kick in the door and walk off with your PC.
I'm picturing the situation where Steve Jobs opens a supply closet and a startled asian Sony engineer yells, "supplies!"
When has Google done anything evil? Seriously.
Certainly they have done a few things that, with wild speculation and attention-whore media reports and tragically hip IT bloggers making crazy leaps of logic, could be considered as having the potential to be evil.
But what evil things has Google actually done?
It was designed from the start, by Google, to be hackable.
There is an interesting Buddhist saying that one should try to act the same way whether one is alone or in public.
On the other hand, can't we just require that these things have a visible LED turned on when they are recording?