Google's Next Big Thing

[A company owned by geeks - its obvious what is next: KITT]

I think, after spending quite a while putting all the information I have together and filling in the blanks what Google's next big aim is.

So, from what I can tell the original founding members of Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin put this list together as things to do with their lives:

1. Create cool geeky technology 
2. Create company to spread technology
3. Get rich, famous, powerful
4. Take over the world
5. Create a car as cool as KITT

I figure the above is any geek's list. It certainly would be my list. So, having completed points 1,2,3,4 already it is time to work on point 5.

So, sub-points for this are –

1. It must talk
2. It must take orders
3. It must drive itself
4. It must come when I talk to my watch
5. It must be bulletproof
6. Turboboost!

So, point 5 has been done so let’s see about the other points:

Point 1 and 2 are done by Android already but Apple has taken it to the next level. I guess Google will take it even further. Naturally you’d need an android device embedded into the car. Guess who owns android technology? Google. The first commercial car radio was made by Motorola Mobility – Google owns them. But watch Motorola Mobility for a talking “box” that can also listen, chat and take orders. (So, I’ll check off points 1 and 2...)

Point 3 has been done by Google – and is on the way to be legal in Nevada (thanks to Google). Check off point 3.

Finally… a smart watch –  check. It needs to be able to talk to the car – check. It needs to be able to pinpoint your position – check. (Actually, not sure if these have GPS but it is not unreasonable to expect that they do or will have soon). It also needs to be able to relay orders again – check.

So, put all this technology together and you have the ability to call your car via your watch and ask it to come to you and it will – all by itself. 

The technology is all done… it is just a matter of putting it together. Take the car and make it bulletproof. Put run-flat tyres on it. (And cool black paint. And a funky red LED on the front.)

Now all the Google guys have to do is perfect Turbo-boost. And get Hoff-worthy hairy chests.

I wonder if Google will go into making helicopters that can fly faster than sound…? Maybe that’s next on their list.

I stand by Gears!

So, no sooner had I posted the last post on my blog when I saw that Google are seriously considering dropping Google Gears at all.

Google are dropping support for the most important piece of software in the last 10 years?
Yes, and no.

Google introduced the world to the idea of offline applications by creating Gears. But maintaining it in all the different browsers and all the different Operating Systems (and variations of each) is painful. And was necessary until HTML5.

But HTML5 is a standard way to implement offline applications, it will be implemented in all browsers soon enough and it will be implemented in a standard way. And Google doesn't need to maintain it.

Google gets what they want and they don't need to support it.

One of the new features in Chrome that separates it from other browsers is the speed that it runs javascript. This became a major feature and forced Mozilla to speed their javascript up to compete. IE will do the same. (Mozilla had a faster javascript engine but they released it sooner than they would have otherwise done.)

So Google don't need Gears but it has already changed the world.

The most important piece of software this decade

[and most people don't even know what it is!]

I've spoken about this software before, I think, but it deserves its own blog post.

And what piece of software is the most important for the last 10 years?

*drum roll*

Google Gears!

"Oh yes of cour- eh, what?!" I hear you say.

Google Gears is a silly little piece of software that merely allows one to run javascript offline. It tricks the browser into thinking that changes are going to the net but are actually stored locally. When an Internet connection is available, the databases are synchronised. Very technical stuff.

But what it really allows is a PC to run only web applications and allows web applications to be feature rich as desktop ones. What is really allows is GMail to compete with Outlook and Google Apps to compete with Office. It not only allows Google to compete directly with Microsoft head-to-head but gives them a slight lead.

Since Google's applications are designed with sharing in mind and Microsoft's are not, Google is ahead in this respect. And since Google's applications are on the Web, you can get to them pretty much from anywhere.

And since Google are driven by a policy of "good-enough as fast as possible" their applications are sleek and ready to be used online - Microsoft have some way to go if they want to compete in this area.

In the mid-90s I remember a whole host of companies decided to take on Microsoft directly and all of them came off second best. Netscape (with navigator - remember that?) , SUN (SunOffice, Java, Net-PC) , IBM (OS/2), Apple (pre-Jobs, iPod).

Netscape is no longer but they did spawn Firefox which is eating into IE's market share in a big way. SUN has some amazing software like Java and SunOffice (or OpenOffice) but they never really impacted on Microsoft's dominance as they looked like they might have. The less said about OS/2 - the better. And Apple reached their lowest point when Microsoft invested in them to keep the company alive.

SUN's vision for a NetPC is coming about again with Google's ChromeOS. The only difference really is that SUN's vision had lots of pretty blue SUN Servers being the central store for all data and apps while Google's vision has lots of ugly grey and black Internet Servers being the central store. (Internet being the important part). Google are making true what SUN never could - "The (Inter)Network is the Computer".

Whether Google will succeed where many have failed remains to be seen but they have lined up some interesting tools to get themselves with at least a chance and at the heart of each of these tools is Google Gears making it all possible.

Google's New Browser

So, Google have released a new browser called Chrome...

What does that mean from an Information Security perspective?

Not very much and a lot, depending if you are looking at the short term or long term.

So, lets get into the short term - there is a new browser. It will have bugs and vulnerabilities. These will be exploited.

Most of the browser is based on webkit which is sorta what kde uses and sorta what safari uses and sorta what a number of cell phones use. It is becoming browser number 4 after IE, mozilla/firefox and opera. This means that hackers (online criminals) will start to notice the browser (if they haven't already). Assuming that the open source promise (many eyes make fewer bugs) stands true and that Google will be quick with patches then this is merely part of the daily application vulnerability race. And if Google is quick with paches then this browser should not be any more unsafe than the others.

There are a few extra security features in this browser - that is always a good thing. For more information read here. Of course the feature that is most interesting - "each-tab-running-separately" has been compromised.

So short term - move along, nothing to see here. Lets move on to the long term...

What is most important in my mind for the long term is the "why" of this browser - why would Google want to jump into a market where they can't be the biggest or the best or even a very effective niche player? Especially since they have a good relationship with Firefox and their product is almost entirely webkit? And their browser is essentially all open source so all the good bits will be analysed and added to Firefox anyhow or improved upon and added to Firefox.

The answer is simple - Google want their browser to fail.

Huh?

Well, that may a bit unfair but they really don't care either way.

Google is the search engine leader. They are also slowly becoming the Internet. This blog is hosted by Google, its feed is hosted by Google. If I need to host video, pictures, sound etc then I would probably choose Google - they are really good at hosting and why bother looking elsewhere when I already have a Google account?

So, almost all of my public information is hosted by Google. What about my private information?

Well... no.

That is all stored safely on my laptop for four reasons -

1. I don't trust Google.
2. I don't trust the Internet.
3. The tools for creating private documents are so much better than the online ones.
4. I can get to my documents when I am offline.
5. The Internet is too slow.

But a lot of my computer day is spent in Microsoft Office. That is a lot of advertising opportunity lost. And if Google can access my personal files then they will have a better idea of what adverts to send my way. Which in turn will make their advertisers happier and Google stock go up.

And all it would take is sorting out the above 5 points.

I was going to go into each one but this post is already getting quite long. Just note that the three features that are most important in Chrome are:

• Security and stability
• Offline application mode
• Fast running and standards based application engine

In other words - helping making it easier to use Google's online applications. Most of the factors are going to be taken care of with Chrome and its kids.

What will happen is that Firefox will catch up with Chrome but Google won't care what you use to access their online applications - just as long as you access them. And that is their game plan.

What this leaves is the final question - all things being equal - is your information more at risk on Google's servers or on you laptop at home?

That is a good question but one we should be looking at.

Sharing is Caring - but not with passwords.

This follows on from my previous post.

We all (should) know by now that we shouldn't share passwords.

But how many of us know exactly where we should use passwords on the internet?

Phishing and its elk have shown us that you can't trust website links that are sent to you via email.

But what if a friend (or what seems to be a friend) pops up on MSN Messenger or via email or facebook and tells you to "check out this cool site". You do it, you trust your friend's judgment and enter your password only to get caught out and your identity is used to send out the next bunch of "hey, check out this cool site" messages.

That is all in my last post which has a real world example of how one can get caught but the question is how do we define what is right and what is not?

My hotmail username and password is my MSN Messenger password and apparently opens up a whole bunch of access for me to other sites. This is the whole "passport", single-sign-on concept dreamed up by Microsoft. I sign on once to one of the "passport" sites and voila, all the other sites need no sign on. Amazing. Except that someone out there could hijack the system and pretend to be a "passport" site gaining them my password and access to all of my "passport" stuff.

Putting down Microsoft's security efforts is like running the 100 meters against a fish. Its too easy; but Google is starting to move in the same direction. My Google username and password gets me into gmail, igoogle, blogger, etc and the list will expand as Google buy more and more companies and bring more and more stuff out of their labs. I don't really use yahoo!'s services but I imagine that they are following the trend which is not limited to Google and Microsoft but is a general industry wide trend.

When I signed up for Blogger I didn't need a new username and password etc; I just logged on with my Google password. Blogger said that they are a Google company so, boom in goes the password. I did check things out first but that's just me, I doubt most people would.

Another thing that surprised me was when facebook asked me for my email username and password so it could check my email contacts against its subscriber base - not my facebook username and password but my online email username and password. This is obviously a service that a large number of people use or else it would have been taken down, freeing up some vital real estate on facebook's main page. Entering this information is optional, but if you do, you have to trust facebook will not store the information, if they do store it then you have to trust that they will store it securely, and not use it themselves except to check your contact list once. Do you trust facebook?

It seems there are no easy ways around this issue. You have to check to make sure that you trust each site you give another site's password to or, better still, don't share the passwords at all.