By JOHN DUNBAR
Congress has passed legislation that will require the government to keep closer tabs on who has access to the Internet and who does not. Supporters hope the Broadband Data Improvement Act will help policymakers better identify areas of the country that are falling behind when it comes to high-speed Internet access.
The bill passed both houses of Congress, with the Senate approving a final version Tuesday on a voice vote.
Senate sponsor Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said the federal government has a responsibility to make sure Americans have access to the Internet, but "we cannot manage what we do not measure."
The Federal Communications Commission collects data on broadband use, but its methods have been criticized as outdated. The commission voted in March to greatly improve its data collection. Broadband providers will be required to provide subscription numbers by Census tract, speed and type of technology.
The legislation passed by Congress goes further. It requires the FCC to conduct consumer surveys of broadband use in urban, suburban and rural areas, as well as large and small business markets. Survey questions will include the cost of access and data transmission speeds.
The legislation requires the agency to compile a list of locales that lack broadband service and determine population and income levels in those areas.
The bill also requires the Census Bureau to add questions about Internet use on its survey. Residents will be asked whether they have a computer, whether they have Internet access and, if so, whether they have a dial-up or broadband connection.
It also orders the Government Accountability Office to study broadband speeds and costs and to compare the "availability and quality of broadband offerings" in the U.S. to other industrialized nations.
Such an analysis might provide some insight as to why the U.S. — the birthplace of the Internet — lags behind other developed countries in broadband usage. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks the U.S. 15th for broadband penetration.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who sponsored a similar bill that passed the House earlier this year, supported the legislation.
"This initiative will help us ascertain whether the nation is achieving its broadband policy goals because, unfortunately, our current knowledge on the state of broadband deployment, speed and affordability in the U.S. is grossly and inexcusably lacking," Markey said.
___
The bill is S. 1492.
___
On the Net:
Bill text: http://www.thomas.loc.gov
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
More Americans watching video online
More Americans watching video online
by afp.com
The number of Americans watching video on their computers has doubled over the past year and growing numbers of younger viewers are enjoying movies and TV shows online, according to a study released Friday by ABI Research. The study found that the number of American consumers watching video streamed through a browser had soared over the past year, from 32 percent a year ago to 63 percent today.
ABI Research said growth in consumption of online video was due to a number of factors, including an increase in the amount of rich content available and more broadband connections.
"Consumers are changing their online habits quickly," ABI's Digital Home research director Michael Wolf said in a statement.
"Broadband speeds have continued to increase at the same time that Hollywood has decided online distribution is a legitimate monetization opportunity that will increase total return on their video assets, and expand audiences."
Much of the growth in the number of Americans watching video online was among younger viewers, the study found, but "consumers of all age groups (are) increasing the frequency and duration of their online video consumption."
It said that although there was increasing demand for both short- and long-form video it was mostly younger viewers who were watching movies or long-form television shows online.
"When asked if they watched long-form content in the form of TV shows or movies online, nearly half of those under 25, and 53 percent of those aged 25-29 indicate they do so once a month or more," ABI Research said.
"Today's younger consumers are developing habits that will mean drastic changes for the video entertainment market," said Wolf.
"Many consume a large percentage or even a majority of their video entertainment through online distribution today."
The study found that while some older viewers had experimented with watching long-form video online, "three quarters of those over 65 who watch video online responded that they have never watched TV shows or movies online."
New York-based ABI Research surveyed 985 online households for the study, asking consumers about their preferences in technology usage and entertainment consumption.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Google’s First Phone: The iPhone With More Buttons
By Saul Hansell
If the HTC’s new G1 cellphone, featuring Google’s Android software, were introduced two years ago, jaws would drop. But Apple’s iPhone already won the wows that go to the first small phone that is truly good at Web browsing. So the G1 offers some interesting evolution, but not a revolution in the concept.
After playing with the G1 for 20 minutes, my initial take is that the G1 is the PC to the iPhone’s Macintosh.
The G1, which is initially being offered exclusively through T-Mobile in the United States and Europe, has many more buttons on the front and many more options on the screens inside. That means that it takes longer to do the things you want to do most frequently, but you also have many more options at hand. For example, when you take a photo, the software asks you whether you want to keep it or delete it. The iPhone just saves all your pictures and you have to go back and delete the ones you don’t want later. (There may be a way to change that setting on the G1, but I didn’t get around to looking at the configuration options. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of them. It’s that sort of device.)
Physically, it is a little narrower than the iPhone, but thicker. That means the screen is a little smaller. I also found that the plastic case feels a little cheap. The biggest differentiator is the G1’s slide-out keyboard, some might find easier to type on than the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.
Some of the software in I played with seemed nice, like the mapping software, which is built on Google Maps and very clearly displayed travel directions. But the phone doesn’t yet give turn-by-turn directions the way a car GPS device does, which is also a well-noted flaw of the iPhone. Neither does the phone record video, another feature some people miss on Apple’s smartphone.
One area where the G1 falls far short of the iPhone is streaming media. The software supports neither Adobe’s Flash — the standard for Web video — nor Apple’s QuickTime. Google did write a special interface so the phone can play videos from Google’s YouTube service. The issue with both Flash and QuickTime appears to be royalties. Neither Google, nor HTC, nor T-Mobile want to pay for this software. If Adobe or Apple wants to release a video player for the phone, they are welcome to, a T-Mobile spokesman said.
It is a bit hard to evaluate the true capabilities of the phone because so much of its potential is what it offers to third-party application developers. In six months, we may see if people can make the G1 do things that no other phone can.
For now, it seems like a very interesting phone for people who really want to type on a little keyboard. But until the value of Android’s slightly clunky flexibility proves out, I suspect many people will prefer the polished simplicity of the iPhone.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Intel Lifts Curtain On Six-Core Server Chips
By Damon Poeter
Intel launched seven new Xeon 7400 Series server processors Monday, including the chip giant's first six-core chip, promising that the devices are better suited for virtualization than Xeon 7300 products already on the market and will deliver performance increases of nearly 50 percent over the previous generation of server processors. Although a good deal of industry interest in the 7400 Series has focused on the six-core processor, at Monday morning's San Francisco launch event, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel said surprisingly little about the $2,729, 2.13GHz chip listed as Xeon L7455. Instead, Intel focused almost entirely on pitching the virtualization advantages of its newest Xeon processors.
Describing the current transition in server virtualization from largely testing and development installations to full-on production deployments, Intel's Tom Kilroy argued that enterprise data centers are entering what he called the "Virtualization 2.0" phase, and the Xeon 7400 Series, formerly code named Dunnington, will be a key to getting there.
"With new features such as additional cores, large shared caches and advanced virtualization technologies, the Xeon 7400 series delivers record-breaking performance that will lead enterprises into the next wave of virtualization deployments," said Kilroy, VP and GM of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.
The new Xeon series chips have up to 16MB of shared L3 cache, come in both quad-core and six-core flavors, feature 45nm process technology, include a low-voltage 50W version for blade configurations, and feature Intel's VT FlexMigration technology, which eases backwards and forwards VM migration across previous Core-based hardware platforms through to the upcoming Nehalem-based MP server products set to be released in 2009.
Intel describes the six-core product as an "x86-compatible 65-watt version which translates to just under 11 watts per core." The fastest chip in the 45nm Xeon 7400 Series is a quad-core 2.66GHz version, listed at the same $2,729 price as the six-core product.
The specs and prices for Xeon 7400 MP Series processors listed by Intel Sunday are:
- X7460 (16MB L3 cache, 2.66GHz, 130W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- E7450 (12MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,301
- E7440 (16MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
- E7430 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,391
- E7420 (8MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,177
- L7455 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 65W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- L7445 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 50W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
Intel launched seven new Xeon 7400 Series server processors Monday, including the chip giant's first six-core chip, promising that the devices are better suited for virtualization than Xeon 7300 products already on the market and will deliver performance increases of nearly 50 percent over the previous generation of server processors. Although a good deal of industry interest in the 7400 Series has focused on the six-core processor, at Monday morning's San Francisco launch event, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel said surprisingly little about the $2,729, 2.13GHz chip listed as Xeon L7455. Instead, Intel focused almost entirely on pitching the virtualization advantages of its newest Xeon processors.
Describing the current transition in server virtualization from largely testing and development installations to full-on production deployments, Intel's Tom Kilroy argued that enterprise data centers are entering what he called the "Virtualization 2.0" phase, and the Xeon 7400 Series, formerly code named Dunnington, will be a key to getting there.
"With new features such as additional cores, large shared caches and advanced virtualization technologies, the Xeon 7400 series delivers record-breaking performance that will lead enterprises into the next wave of virtualization deployments," said Kilroy, VP and GM of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.
The new Xeon series chips have up to 16MB of shared L3 cache, come in both quad-core and six-core flavors, feature 45nm process technology, include a low-voltage 50W version for blade configurations, and feature Intel's VT FlexMigration technology, which eases backwards and forwards VM migration across previous Core-based hardware platforms through to the upcoming Nehalem-based MP server products set to be released in 2009.
Intel describes the six-core product as an "x86-compatible 65-watt version which translates to just under 11 watts per core." The fastest chip in the 45nm Xeon 7400 Series is a quad-core 2.66GHz version, listed at the same $2,729 price as the six-core product.
The specs and prices for Xeon 7400 MP Series processors listed by Intel Sunday are:
- X7460 (16MB L3 cache, 2.66GHz, 130W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- E7450 (12MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,301
- E7440 (16MB L3 cache, 2.40GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
- E7430 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,391
- E7420 (8MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 90W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,177
- L7455 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 65W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $2,729
- L7445 (12MB L3 cache, 2.13GHz, 50W, 1066MHz FSB, 45nm): $1,980
Friday, September 12, 2008
Google and the SEO Benefits of Affiliate Tracking Links
by CarstenCumbrowski
Brian Klais wrote in June, 2008 in his post “Amazon’s Secret to Dominating SERP Results” at the Natural Search Blog about how Amazon.com leverages the inbound links of their vast number of affiliates for their organic SEO advantage by 301-redirecting BOTs for the URLs that include the affiliate tracking code to the single primary URL of the same page that they want to be indexed by the search engines.
Some folks think that what Amazon.com is doing violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines, because what they do is a special kind of cloaking, but I would argue that. The webpage where the bots and the user end up are the same. Amazon is not deceiving anybody, not the users and not the bots either. If you 301 only bots and not everybody who access your site via YourDomain.com to www.YourDomain.com to prevent duplicate indexing of your website homepage and PageRank leakage, is that cloaking? Is it unethical? I am sure that most people would agree with me when I say that it is not. So technically everything should be cool and peachy, or shouldn’t it?
Well, there is another aspect to the whole thing. I spent almost the entire year 2007 to get an answer my question whether affiliate links are considered paid links by Google or not and if they are, should they be “no-followed” by the affiliate publisher to avoid potential penalties (for “selling” links) by Google, or not?
After numerous posts here at SearchEngineJournal.com and ReveNews.com, Matt Cutts finally was so kind to provide a response in December 2007 in the comment section of my post about Matt’s “paid reviews” examples. I made it easy for him and provided pre-set answers to my question in multiple choice formats.
Does Google consider affiliate links to be paid links?
Yes No It depends We are not sure yet Matt’s Answer was:
“Hi Carsten, the short answer is 3 depending on the affiliate link.
Here’s a slightly longer answer: I wrote about this a bit on our webmaster help group discussion at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/msg/7db86afb08801278where I said
“we’ve spent most of our time talking about paying money for text links or paid posts, because Google does a pretty good job of detecting and handling things like affiliate links or banner ads. In addition, many banner ads (whether they be the 468×80 kind or the 125×125 kind) end up doing at least one redirect through a 302. If you’re a site owner, one rule of thumb I’d recommend is that if you’re being directly paid to place a link, that link shouldn’t affect search engines, but we haven’t talked much about those advertising banners because Google detects and handles such banner ads quite well.”
The fact is that many affiliate links go through several redirects and don’t flow PageRank, so Google wouldn’t be concerned with such links at all. However, if your affiliate link were a direct static link that passes PageRank and you get paid for even placing that affiliate link on your site whether or not someone clicks on it, that would look pretty close to a paid link to us.”
The last sentence seems to provide the answer to the question and validate the legitimacy of Amazons SEO tactics. It also shows how little Google (or at least Matt) understands about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is performance marketing. Affiliates are not getting paid to place a link on their website. They only get paid for results. That is the whole point of this marketing channel. Affiliates are certainly not paid anything for placing one type of tracking link on their site over another. It is not uncommon that affiliates get an incentive for better placement or special exposure on a popular publisher website, but that deal has absolutely nothing to do with SEO. The incentive is often a higher commission rate across the board for all referrals and seldom a one-time cash bonus.
Furthermore, for advertisers to offer two different sets of tracking links, one set that does not pass PageRank (e.g. a traditional affiliate network provided link via Commission Junction, LinkShare or Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network) and a second set that does pass PageRank would create all kinds of new problems for the advertiser. Offering this second set of links for the sole purpose of SEO does not outweigh the complications and issues that come along with it. Offering a second set (or third or fourth) is being done by some advertisers, but that has usually many other reasons. Any SEO benefit would only be an afterthought or added bonus. The reason for the additional sets is usually the increase of reach to new and/or different group of publishers, which the advertiser cannot easily reach via his existing tracking and reporting platform.
However, there is an entirely different trend that should be of the concern of Google and that is the increase of affiliate tracking platforms that offer to advertisers not only the means to track referrals and manage affiliate publishers and their payments, but benefits for SEO purposes, by leveraging the inbound link power from the publisher websites as a special bonus. This bonus is not hard to implement from a technological point of view. Having tracking links (and tracking cookies) managed by the advertiser on his website requires more technical expertise from the advertiser for the implementation of the tracking platform, but the benefits beyond just SEO make this extra investment worthwhile for advertisers who can afford it.
LinkShare, one of the oldest affiliate networks always required this kind of expertise from their advertisers, which kept the setup cost for the LinkShare solution considerably high compared to the low cost, easy to implement “pixel tracking” solutions offered by competitors of LinkShare. LinkShare’s tracking links don’t provide any SEO benefit, because it was not thought about that back in 1996 when they developed their core tracking platform. This shortcoming could be changed fairly easy though, if LinkShare decides one day that this provides value for their advertisers and gives them a competitive advantage over its major competitors CJ and Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network.
I wrote a long article about the technology behind affiliate tracking at ReveNews.com back in April, 2008, if you would like to learn more about this subject.
Now that Google became a player in the affiliate marketing space themselves via their acquisition of DoubleClick, where they got the affiliate network Performics, which was owned by DoubleClick as a bonus. Google decided to split off the SEM part of Performics and sell it, but to keep the affiliate network part, which they re-branded to Google Affiliate Network not too long ago. I hope this will provide Google with a better understanding about the affiliate marketing industry.
The Amazon.com example is only the tip of the iceberg. I told Matt in a response to his comment that there is more going on than he seemed to be aware of, specifically the trend to provide affiliate tracking solutions that are SEO friendly at the same time. Affiliates are not paid money for putting up a link on their websites, but they (might, or they at least hope to) have a financial interest in putting up this link, because they want people to click on that link AND they want even more that the user takes a desired action at the advertisers website that will make them a commission. In contradiction to AdSense or other CPM or PPC based advertising is it necessary that the user converts, before the affiliate gets paid a single dime for their efforts and links on their websites.
This is the reason why it does not make sense to add irrelevant links on your affiliate website, because you can have millions of impressions and thousands of click-throughs and still don’t get a penny worth of commission for it, if the people who see the Ad and maybe click on it are not the right target for the offer and simply do not convert.
So the answer to my question should be a clear “NO“. This would end the debate once and for all. This subject is still on the minds of advertisers and publishers alike, because Google refuses to be clear about it.
A discussion at WebMasterWorld.com forums from December, 2007 shows that webmasters are uncertain and worried about what Google makes out of all of this, so I am not making it up that there are valid concerns that should be addressed by Google officially rather sooner than later, unless the folks in Mountain View prefer the strategy of deception, doubt, uncertainty and fear to deal with this issue as they do in the broader paid links issue already.
Since Google is now part of the affiliate marketing “family”, I hope that their attitude will change and that clear answers will be given to webmasters that they do not have to worry about possible Google penalties, if they do something that makes sense from an affiliate business point of view.
Google and Affiliates have the same goal, providing the most relevant results (and ads) to their users that they convert and are happy, because if they do a poor job, both will be put out of business in the long run.
Brian Klais wrote in June, 2008 in his post “Amazon’s Secret to Dominating SERP Results” at the Natural Search Blog about how Amazon.com leverages the inbound links of their vast number of affiliates for their organic SEO advantage by 301-redirecting BOTs for the URLs that include the affiliate tracking code to the single primary URL of the same page that they want to be indexed by the search engines.
Some folks think that what Amazon.com is doing violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines, because what they do is a special kind of cloaking, but I would argue that. The webpage where the bots and the user end up are the same. Amazon is not deceiving anybody, not the users and not the bots either. If you 301 only bots and not everybody who access your site via YourDomain.com to www.YourDomain.com to prevent duplicate indexing of your website homepage and PageRank leakage, is that cloaking? Is it unethical? I am sure that most people would agree with me when I say that it is not. So technically everything should be cool and peachy, or shouldn’t it?
Well, there is another aspect to the whole thing. I spent almost the entire year 2007 to get an answer my question whether affiliate links are considered paid links by Google or not and if they are, should they be “no-followed” by the affiliate publisher to avoid potential penalties (for “selling” links) by Google, or not?
After numerous posts here at SearchEngineJournal.com and ReveNews.com, Matt Cutts finally was so kind to provide a response in December 2007 in the comment section of my post about Matt’s “paid reviews” examples. I made it easy for him and provided pre-set answers to my question in multiple choice formats.
Does Google consider affiliate links to be paid links?
Yes No It depends We are not sure yet Matt’s Answer was:
“Hi Carsten, the short answer is 3 depending on the affiliate link.
Here’s a slightly longer answer: I wrote about this a bit on our webmaster help group discussion at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/msg/7db86afb08801278where I said
“we’ve spent most of our time talking about paying money for text links or paid posts, because Google does a pretty good job of detecting and handling things like affiliate links or banner ads. In addition, many banner ads (whether they be the 468×80 kind or the 125×125 kind) end up doing at least one redirect through a 302. If you’re a site owner, one rule of thumb I’d recommend is that if you’re being directly paid to place a link, that link shouldn’t affect search engines, but we haven’t talked much about those advertising banners because Google detects and handles such banner ads quite well.”
The fact is that many affiliate links go through several redirects and don’t flow PageRank, so Google wouldn’t be concerned with such links at all. However, if your affiliate link were a direct static link that passes PageRank and you get paid for even placing that affiliate link on your site whether or not someone clicks on it, that would look pretty close to a paid link to us.”
The last sentence seems to provide the answer to the question and validate the legitimacy of Amazons SEO tactics. It also shows how little Google (or at least Matt) understands about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is performance marketing. Affiliates are not getting paid to place a link on their website. They only get paid for results. That is the whole point of this marketing channel. Affiliates are certainly not paid anything for placing one type of tracking link on their site over another. It is not uncommon that affiliates get an incentive for better placement or special exposure on a popular publisher website, but that deal has absolutely nothing to do with SEO. The incentive is often a higher commission rate across the board for all referrals and seldom a one-time cash bonus.
Furthermore, for advertisers to offer two different sets of tracking links, one set that does not pass PageRank (e.g. a traditional affiliate network provided link via Commission Junction, LinkShare or Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network) and a second set that does pass PageRank would create all kinds of new problems for the advertiser. Offering this second set of links for the sole purpose of SEO does not outweigh the complications and issues that come along with it. Offering a second set (or third or fourth) is being done by some advertisers, but that has usually many other reasons. Any SEO benefit would only be an afterthought or added bonus. The reason for the additional sets is usually the increase of reach to new and/or different group of publishers, which the advertiser cannot easily reach via his existing tracking and reporting platform.
However, there is an entirely different trend that should be of the concern of Google and that is the increase of affiliate tracking platforms that offer to advertisers not only the means to track referrals and manage affiliate publishers and their payments, but benefits for SEO purposes, by leveraging the inbound link power from the publisher websites as a special bonus. This bonus is not hard to implement from a technological point of view. Having tracking links (and tracking cookies) managed by the advertiser on his website requires more technical expertise from the advertiser for the implementation of the tracking platform, but the benefits beyond just SEO make this extra investment worthwhile for advertisers who can afford it.
LinkShare, one of the oldest affiliate networks always required this kind of expertise from their advertisers, which kept the setup cost for the LinkShare solution considerably high compared to the low cost, easy to implement “pixel tracking” solutions offered by competitors of LinkShare. LinkShare’s tracking links don’t provide any SEO benefit, because it was not thought about that back in 1996 when they developed their core tracking platform. This shortcoming could be changed fairly easy though, if LinkShare decides one day that this provides value for their advertisers and gives them a competitive advantage over its major competitors CJ and Performics, excuse me, Google Affiliate Network.
I wrote a long article about the technology behind affiliate tracking at ReveNews.com back in April, 2008, if you would like to learn more about this subject.
Now that Google became a player in the affiliate marketing space themselves via their acquisition of DoubleClick, where they got the affiliate network Performics, which was owned by DoubleClick as a bonus. Google decided to split off the SEM part of Performics and sell it, but to keep the affiliate network part, which they re-branded to Google Affiliate Network not too long ago. I hope this will provide Google with a better understanding about the affiliate marketing industry.
The Amazon.com example is only the tip of the iceberg. I told Matt in a response to his comment that there is more going on than he seemed to be aware of, specifically the trend to provide affiliate tracking solutions that are SEO friendly at the same time. Affiliates are not paid money for putting up a link on their websites, but they (might, or they at least hope to) have a financial interest in putting up this link, because they want people to click on that link AND they want even more that the user takes a desired action at the advertisers website that will make them a commission. In contradiction to AdSense or other CPM or PPC based advertising is it necessary that the user converts, before the affiliate gets paid a single dime for their efforts and links on their websites.
This is the reason why it does not make sense to add irrelevant links on your affiliate website, because you can have millions of impressions and thousands of click-throughs and still don’t get a penny worth of commission for it, if the people who see the Ad and maybe click on it are not the right target for the offer and simply do not convert.
So the answer to my question should be a clear “NO“. This would end the debate once and for all. This subject is still on the minds of advertisers and publishers alike, because Google refuses to be clear about it.
A discussion at WebMasterWorld.com forums from December, 2007 shows that webmasters are uncertain and worried about what Google makes out of all of this, so I am not making it up that there are valid concerns that should be addressed by Google officially rather sooner than later, unless the folks in Mountain View prefer the strategy of deception, doubt, uncertainty and fear to deal with this issue as they do in the broader paid links issue already.
Since Google is now part of the affiliate marketing “family”, I hope that their attitude will change and that clear answers will be given to webmasters that they do not have to worry about possible Google penalties, if they do something that makes sense from an affiliate business point of view.
Google and Affiliates have the same goal, providing the most relevant results (and ads) to their users that they convert and are happy, because if they do a poor job, both will be put out of business in the long run.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Google Offers Web Searchers, Chrome Users More Privacy
By Thomas Claburn
The previous 18-month retention policy has been whittled down to address regulatory concerns.
Moving to address privacy concerns, Google on Monday said it will reduce the amount of time it keeps server log data.
More Internet InsightsWhite PapersSmall Business Web Design Guide Part I: SEO Tips for Small Business Websites Simple Tricks To Ace the Subnetting Portion of Any Certification Exam "We'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months," said Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath, and software engineer Alma Whitten in a jointly authored blog post. "We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users." Google also said it will change the way its Google Suggest feature works to make the service more private.
Google Suggest proposes possible search term refinements as Google users type their queries. It is available in Google Chrome, Google's new Web browser, as well as in Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Search for the iPhone, and Mozilla's Firefox.
To read what the user is typing and respond to it, Google Suggest routes typed input to Google, without any affirmative action on the user's part, like hitting the "enter" key. Ninety-eight percent of the time, Google says it does not record any of this input. But 2% of Google Suggest input gets stored and logged "to monitor and improve the service." The information retained includes the user's IP address, through which is it usually possible to identify the user.
Google insists that it needs to retain certain information to improve search and security. But Urs Holzle, Google's senior VP of operations, in a blog post said that in the case of Google Suggest "it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately."
"[G]iven the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use," said Holzle. "This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month."
Since last year, when regulators and policymakers began questioning Google's privacy practices in earnest and competitors' privacy initiatives made Google's efforts look half-hearted, Google has looked like a company on the defensive.
As recently as June, a coalition of consumer and privacy groups published an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asking Google to place a privacy link on its home page, as required by California law. When Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, announced that Google had decided to add a privacy link to Google's home page after all, she noted that Google's co-founders would only agree to the change if the number of words on the home page remained unchanged. The deciding factor thus was technical -- minimizing page load time -- rather than customer respect or legal compliance.
But with Monday's announcements, Google appears to be more willing to engage on the issue of privacy. Perhaps that will be enough to keep regulators at bay.
The previous 18-month retention policy has been whittled down to address regulatory concerns.
Moving to address privacy concerns, Google on Monday said it will reduce the amount of time it keeps server log data.
More Internet InsightsWhite PapersSmall Business Web Design Guide Part I: SEO Tips for Small Business Websites Simple Tricks To Ace the Subnetting Portion of Any Certification Exam "We'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months," said Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath, and software engineer Alma Whitten in a jointly authored blog post. "We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users." Google also said it will change the way its Google Suggest feature works to make the service more private.
Google Suggest proposes possible search term refinements as Google users type their queries. It is available in Google Chrome, Google's new Web browser, as well as in Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Search for the iPhone, and Mozilla's Firefox.
To read what the user is typing and respond to it, Google Suggest routes typed input to Google, without any affirmative action on the user's part, like hitting the "enter" key. Ninety-eight percent of the time, Google says it does not record any of this input. But 2% of Google Suggest input gets stored and logged "to monitor and improve the service." The information retained includes the user's IP address, through which is it usually possible to identify the user.
Google insists that it needs to retain certain information to improve search and security. But Urs Holzle, Google's senior VP of operations, in a blog post said that in the case of Google Suggest "it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately."
"[G]iven the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use," said Holzle. "This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month."
Since last year, when regulators and policymakers began questioning Google's privacy practices in earnest and competitors' privacy initiatives made Google's efforts look half-hearted, Google has looked like a company on the defensive.
As recently as June, a coalition of consumer and privacy groups published an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asking Google to place a privacy link on its home page, as required by California law. When Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, announced that Google had decided to add a privacy link to Google's home page after all, she noted that Google's co-founders would only agree to the change if the number of words on the home page remained unchanged. The deciding factor thus was technical -- minimizing page load time -- rather than customer respect or legal compliance.
But with Monday's announcements, Google appears to be more willing to engage on the issue of privacy. Perhaps that will be enough to keep regulators at bay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)