Tag: Google

Google Flu Tracker Fail

New Scientist sums up a study finding that Google’s much-hyped flu tracker–where the company supposedly can predict flu outbreaks based simply volume of search queries for flu-related terms–doesn’t actually work very well.

The system has consistently overestimated flu-related visits over the past three years, and was especially inaccurate around the peak of flu season – when such data is most useful. In the 2012/2013 season, it predicted twice as many doctors’ visits as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) eventually recorded. In 2011/2012 it overestimated by more than 50 per cent.

Interesting. The most surprising part of this outcome, however, is that lead author of the study is actually surprised that Google hasn’t fixed this,

The study’s lead author, David Lazer, of Northeastern University, says the fixes for Google’s problems are relatively simple – much like recalibrating weighing scales. “It’s a bit of a puzzle, because it really wouldn’t have taken that much work to substantially improve the performance of Google Flu Trends,” he says.

That wouldn’t surprise anyone who actually uses any Google products or services at all. There are dozens of simple, easy things that Google could do to improve any number of their products, including bugs that users have been complaining about for years., that Google chooses to ignore.

Why should it be any different with the flu? Clearly the problem with the flu tracker is the influenza virus’ unwillingness to conform to Google’s business practices rather than any actual defect in its software or approach to predicting flu cases.

Google Sucks…and It’s Going to Get Worse

One of the odd things about technology is that a good portion of users of a given company’s technology tend to become fanboys of that company. So when Apple bans a game that mocks its (and other tech companies) labor practices, you will find no shortage of defenders of that and even worse decisions or practices.

For some people, apparently, the technology they use and love becomes such a part of their identity that the thought that the company that makes the technology might do awful things is threatening and has to be countered at every opportunity.

A better way to think about our relationship to corporations who make the products we use everyday might go something like this: these companies suck. They don’t care about the same things their customers do (except, to the extent their customers are also worried about the company’s quarterly profits and stock price). Occasionally, the interests of customers and a corporation interests overlap, but when something changes the corporation will screw the customers over and not even bother to buy them dinner.

Take Google’s Android. Every phone I’ve ever owned has been an Android. When all is said in done, I prefer both the Android OS to Apple’s iOS, and I prefer Google’s business practices to Apple’s.

But I harbor no illusions that Google is anything but a ruthless profit maximizer whose “Don’t be evil” slogan is about as reliable as Tim Tebow’s deep pass threat.

AdBlock Plus

Google had no problem, for example, banishing AdBlock Plus from the Google Play store. Google’s justification for removing AdBlock Plus and other ad block apps was that they “interfere with or accesses another service or product in an unauthorized manner,” which is a violation of the Play Store’s Terms of Service.

What AdBlock Plus actually does is run in the background on Android as a proxy and removes ads. The nice thing is it removes ads both within web browsers as well as in-app ads.

So Google’s claim is that any software that lets a user install a proxy and to use that proxy to filter incoming data is a violation of the Google Play Store’s TOS. A clear-cut case where Google’s interests as an advertising sales company suddenly conflicts harshly with the interests of its customers.

The nice thing about Android is I can get AdBlock Plus up and running on my phone without needing to root/jailbreak it. Unlike Apple’s model for iOS, I can download AdBlock Plus directly and install it or turn to alternative app stores. Of course, it also knows that the average Android phone owner is probably not going to know how to do that or be willing to do that.

The Future

I suspect things like this are going to happen more frequently.

One of the things that Android fan boys have been celebrating is Android overtaking iOS in smart phone market share. This is a mistake–personally, I was hoping Android would continue to play second fiddle to iOS.

Many of the things that make Android great, including Google’s general handling of Android, are byproducts of Android needing to overcome the iOS juggernaut. Android is more open than iOS simply because Google had no other choice if it wanted to overcome Apple’s market lead.

As Google’s market lead becomes solidified and some of its decisions to open source Android start to bite back at Google, I suspect it will take Danny Sullivan’s advice and ultimately create a closed phone OS.

And then it will be time to look for other projects or companies where, for now, the interests of customers and the company coincide, such as the phone OSes being developed by Canonical and The Mozilla Foundation.

Google eBookstore Fail

Google’s new e-book initiative had such potential, but taking a look after it launched it was hard not to think: this is it? This is all Google could come up with?

On launch day, the entire project was largely  useless. No wish list support? On the Android app, they couldn’t be bothered to make the author hyperlinked so I could quickly see what other titles by the same writer were available? Adding a book to the library meant being kicked back to the main screen rather than to the search page I’d landed on? Are you kidding me?

Google’s eBookstore effort looked like it was knocked out by a couple of college students over a weekend as part of a half-ass class project (which seems to describe a lot of the efforts coming out of Google lately). But a bigger problem was the supposed openness that Google touted to its e-book effort, and what in fact turned out to be yet another closed system.

So I can read my Google ebooks on a number of platforms, including iOS and Android devices as well as the Sony Reader and the Nook. Frankly that’s not very impressive and not all that different from the other big e-book services out there. Moreover, DRM is baked into many of the commercial books sold by Google. That is not surprising, but again just what is Google offering that is any different from the 3 or 4 other big players in this market?

Here’s what would have impressed me — let me upload the non-DRMed ebooks I already own into a book locker at Google’s site and let me manage those the same way I can manage the books I get from Google. Let me upload all of my Baen books in epub format, for example, and then read those across all my devices. Let me take some of the PDFs I’ve got of books that are self-published and have a Creative Commons license and add those too.

Google, of course, won’t let you do that for the same reason it is running into problems trying to launch its music locker services — publishers would likely scream and withhold their content. I get it. Although it would be cool, Google would be left without many business partners and probably only a fraction of the 3 million ebooks it now advertises as being available.

But, at least then it would be something new and potentially revolutionary. As it is, Google Books is just another retread of every other e-book offering out there. If I were to go with a DRM-heavy service, frankly I’d go with the Amazon Kindle at this point.

Gmail Adds Nested Labels to Labs

Gmail Labs recently added a nested labels feature to Gmail. This is a feature that has been available for quite a while thanks to the Folders4Gmail GreaseMonkey script, but it is nice to see Google move to add this feature in Labs so it will work in any browser. Out of the box right now it doesn’t work quite as well as the Folders4Gmail script did, but presumably Google will tweak it over the next few weeks to bring it up to that level.

How Much Does Google Earn from Typosquatting?

New Scientist reports on a study by two Harvard researchers suggesting that Google may earn as much as $500 million annually from typosquatting — those ad-filled domains that target people who mistype the domain name of popular websites.

According to New Scientist,

[Tyler] Moore and [Benjamin] Edelman started by using common spelling mistakes to create a list of possible typo domains for the 3264 most popular .com websites, as determined by Alexa.com rankings. They estimate that each of the 3264 top sites is targeted by around 280 typo domains.

They then used software to crawl 285,000 of these 900,000-odd sites to determine what revenue the typo domains might be generating.

If the top 100,000 websites suffer the same typosquatting rate as the sites Moore and Edelman studied, up to 68 million people a day could visit a typo site, they say. They estimate that almost 60 per cent of typo sites could have adverts supplied by Google.

If the company earns as much per visitor from ads on typo sites as it reportedly does from ads alongside search results, it could potentially earn $497 million a year in revenue from typo domains, they conclude.

Edelman is co-counsel on a lawsuit against Google by a firm seeking damages from Google for serving ads on a typosquatting domain, so he’s not a disinterested party here.

Google will stop serving ads on typosquatting domain names if the owner of the “legitimate” domain name complains, but it doesn’t pro-actively seek out such domains.

Edelman apparently wants Google to do so and notes that typosquatters tend to own hundreds or thousands of such domain names, so presumably Google could block Domain X and then also perhaps use WHOIS to find other typosquatted domain names owned by the same person. That seems like an extremely problematic solution that would be relatively easy for squatters to route around fairly easily.

If, as Edelman says, it is fairly easy to identify typosquatters, why not sue them directly, perhaps in a class action representing the presumably thousands of businesses who are allegedly harmed by this practice?