Saturday, January 31, 2009
Google is Stoopid
| Computer security is a big deal these days. What with identity theft and credit card fraud it is understandable. The problem is that sometimes, in the name of "security" people take it too far. No this is NOT a commentary on the government and homeland defense. In my computer class, Very early in the semester (1st or second day of class usually) the topic of Windows Vista comes up. Our class is WindowsXP based because our book is WindowsXP based. The NC school system has made the decision to stick with XP for now. When I was working in GA and Vista first came out, the US Air Force (and I assume the rest of DOD) decided to stick with XP. In fact most of the corporate world opted to stick with XP. This, of course, did not sit well with Microsoft. They've been fighting an uphill battle ever since. Most of the fight has been perception, not fact. Thus the recent "Windows Mohave" commercials. As a side note, I am REALLY tired of commercials where companies LIE about who they are, PRETEND to be other companies, and TRICK customers, simply to film a commercial. (I'm looking at you Hardees, Pizza Hut, Microsoft and Burger King.) If a company will lie to their customers about who they are, how can you trust ANYTHING else they say or do? People say they hear bad things about Vista but few have actually experienced bad things in Vista. I am not saying Vista doesn't do bad things. I am just saying the problems have been blown WAY out of proportion. With that said, most of the issues with Vista center around one thing: Security. Vista is extremely concerned about your computer's security and protecting your data. Vista will protect you and your computer from any and all outside threats. Sounds good, right? The only problem is, Vista see YOU as an "outside threat." Want to install new software? Vista will fight you. Want to install new hardware? Vista will fight you. Want to eat your dinner dangerously close to your computer? Vista will fight you. (Just kidding on the last one.) The latest company to overprotect you is Google. Now I use Google a lot. I used Alta Vista exclusively for almost 10 years. Now I go with whichever works at the time. As of this morning, Google dropped from that list. I was doing some research for a blog post this morning and did a quick Google search for something, hoping to find a picture. The results came back, but with the following cryptic message: The problem is their standards for being "flagged" are vague at best, and not very good standards. I fully expect my blog to be flagged at some point. Since Alta Vista has been bought out by Yahoo (just like the half of the internet not owned by Google) I have found some of Alta Vista's search results being "flagged" by Yahoo and they also have an extra "warning" page. My first and biggest concern with this is the "nonstandard standards" for flagging "potentially dangerous" sites. I figure it's just a way for Google and Yahoo to make more money. It's already well known that those who pay money to search engine companies get moved up in the results. It's a shady practice but not unexpected. How else will they ever make money? Most search engines are really "Selective Search Engines." My concern has been that they'd start flagging all sites as "potentially harmful" until those site owners came on bended knee to Google and Yahoo and pledged their loyalty. Thus giving more power to those already bloated internet companies. The reason I bring this up this morning is this: Google just bit themselves in the butt. After my innocent search this morning, I noticed EVERY site in the results had been "flagged." This included sites I knew darn well were not harmful. One of my favorite "logic tricks" is to "turn something in on itself." So I simply Googled Google.   As a programmer and programming teacher, very few things upset me as much as people in the computer industry who skip "Alpha Testing" and "Beta Testing" and unleash error riddled software on the public without warning and without permission. It's even worse when the "errors" serve to terrify the unsuspecting public, or extort hard working innocent companies. It's like suddenly yelling "Fire" in a crowded and unsuspecting movie theatre just to see if it works. PS Within 45 minutes of the error appearing, Google has "fixed" the problem. Now don't you feel safer?  |
