Google – TechVirtuoso

Why you shouldn’t leak the CONFIDENTIAL memos your CEO sends out

November 11th, 2010 at 12:16 PM 4 Comments Michael Stanclift

So you’ve got a really great job as an engineer for Google, and it just got better because the CEO sent the entire company an email letting everyone know how much he appreciated them and that they’d be getting a 10% raise and a $1,000 cash bonus. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

You decide to let the rest of the world know how great your job is, and how great your CEO is for giving you a raise by sending the email to the press. The press, jumps on it, talking up how great Google is for giving their all their employees an across the board raise in such harsh economic time, etc, etc.

One small problem. That email you forwarded to the press. Yeah, that was confidential.

More specifically:

CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY
GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES)

Eric tracked you down, and guess what. You’re fired.

I’m not sure what Google’s reasoning for doing so was, but it happened. And it should prove as a lesson not to be so direct about forwarding company communications to the press. The funny thing though, is that the news about the leaker being fired, probably came from a leak within Google.

via Business Insider, CNN Money

Google rolls out instant search on mobile devices

November 4th, 2010 at 7:49 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Google has begun rolling out it’s instant search feature on iOS and Android browsers. When you visit www.google.com find the “Instant (beta) is” option at the bottom and search away. Results will appear instantly in your browser.

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Google sues the federal government for wanting to use Exchange

November 1st, 2010 at 6:35 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

So the US Department of the Interior decides that it wants a new email system, and after consideration decides it wants to use Microsoft’s hosted Exchange platform.

Pretty straight forward, right?

Well, until Google decides that the DOI should have used Google Apps instead, and goes to sue the government for wanting to use Microsoft’s products. Nevermind the fact that Google doesn’t even have a GSA contract and cannot actually sell products to the federal government without one.

Google’s case makes it sound like they’re trying to protect the government from disaster by going with Microsoft’s product, providing a filing full of reasons why their platform is superior and Microsoft’s is run by idiots. Nevermind the fact that Google Apps has had it’s fair share of issues in the last few months (even in the last week) and that they’re constantly adding/changing/removing features that would probably not be welcome in a government setting.

via TechDirt

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Hotmail adds ‘Send As’ support, users say ‘meh’

November 1st, 2010 at 11:59 AM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft has begun rolling out a new feature to Hotmail, allowing users to “Send As” another email account. While this is a welcomed feature and one that the lack of contributed to my migration to Gmail, it’s not exactly ground breaking new features.

In reality it’s just another example of Microsoft playing catch up to Google in terms of providing a fully functional web email client.

via The Windows Blog

Google’s ‘best deal ever’

October 28th, 2010 at 7:58 AM 1 Comment Frank Owen

David Lawee, vice president of corporate development for Google, stated at the 16th annual Stanford Accel Symposium that acquiring Android Inc. was Google’s “best deal ever.” It is hard to argue with him with the rumored acquisition cost of $50 mil, especially with the market share the OS has gained in the last year.

With as many acquisitions that continue to happen at Google it may be a hard statement for Android to keep up with. With Microsoft revamping their Mobile OS, HP brining Palm to the new level, RIM deciding it better get moving and Apple sitting on it’s laurels who knows what will happen in the coming years in the mobile space.

Google now dominates 6.4% of Internet traffic

October 26th, 2010 at 6:15 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

According to Craig Labovitz at security company Arbor Networks, Google’s domination of the network that is the Internet is now averaging at about 6.4% of all traffic. This is up a full 1% since the start of the year.

As Labovitz says:

If Google were an ISP, as of this month it would rank as the second largest carrier on the planet. Only one global tier1 provider still carries more traffic than Google (and this ISP also provides a large portion of Google’s transit).

According to Arbor, Google is actually growing faster than the Internet itself.

Google Apps: Just a good thought?

October 25th, 2010 at 9:24 PM 1 Comment Frank Owen

Modifying a phrase that @johnobeto uses “They Who Must Be Obeyed” at my company (Upper Management) is always looking for ways to cut how much we spend on IT services. This can be a nuisance but every once in a while it opens the door to allow me to look for new companies that can provide more functionality while lowering the cost. A few months ago I was tasked with looking into new email providers to move our email into the cloud.

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The Nexus One vs The iPhone (and life after iOS)

July 2nd, 2010 at 2:36 PM 5 Comments Michael Stanclift

As I explained in a previous entry on Tuesday, I’ve made the decision to leave the world of Apple mobile devices for the land of Google Android. To briefly bring you up to speed:

Ever since the iPhone supported Exchange, I’ve been a huge supporter. I’ve spent two good years on the iOS with my iPhone 3G. … When the iPhone 4 was announced, I followed the WWDC keynote with great anticipation. I ooh’d and aah’d at all the advances in design and software. … (after getting it) Taking it home that night, I started to notice something was a little off with my phone. … (antenna issues) I dropped a few calls that weekend, including one to my father who seem’d to have lost my mother, but I could make due. … The view from most of the people within the Apple world was that it was firmware related, and would be quickly fixed. Then Steve Jobs opened his mouth. … I found myself deeply disappointed in the device and the operating system. Enough so that I’ve made the switch to Android.

There, now that we’re all up-to-date, I’m happy to say that my Nexus One is activated and I’ve had the last couple days to play with it. Having had experience with many different mobile device styles and platforms, including Windows Mobile, Palm OS (the original, not the WebOS) and iPhone, I can honestly say that the Nexus One and Android OS is the best mobile experience I’ve ever had. (more…)

Google Chrome to include Adobe Flash player

March 30th, 2010 at 2:27 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

In a move that is sure to anger those who like total control over the software on their computers, Google has teamed up with Adobe to bundle Flash player with their Chrome browser. From the announcement on the Chromium Blog:

Today, we’re making available an initial integration of Flash Player with Chrome in the developer channel. We plan to bring this functionality to all Chrome users as quickly as we can.

We believe this initiative will help our users in the following ways:

When users download Chrome, they will also receive the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. There will be no need to install Flash Player separately.

Users will automatically receive updates related to Flash Player using Google Chrome’s auto-update mechanism. This eliminates the need to manually download separate updates and reduces the security risk of using outdated versions.

With Adobe’s help, we plan to further protect users by extending Chrome’s “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content.

Improving the traditional browser plug-in model will make it possible for plug-ins to be just as fast, stable, and secure as the browser’s HTML and JavaScript engines. Over time this will enable HTML, Flash, and other plug-ins to be used together more seamlessly in rendering and scripting.

Those who were hoping to see HTML5 deal a killshot to Flash, should be very disappointed.

Why lazy sysadmins and IE 6 make the net unsafe

January 16th, 2010 at 11:14 AM 3 Comments Michael Stanclift

The number of businesses still using Internet Explorer 6 is painful to see. Coupled with the fact that all of them are on Windows XP or Windows 2000, it turns from pain into terror, especially when it comes to security.

For a lot of system administrators, the reasons to stay outweigh the reasons to upgrade. Websites that break, plugins that won’t load, old software that isn’t updated anymore. Trust me, I’ve been there. However, a lot of it boils down to lazy and poor practices of system administration.

Yes, you’re lazy and you’re bad at your job. Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. Yes, 2001, most of us don’t even drive cars that old, let alone unleash people on the “information superhighway” with a browser that old. It was designed at a time when security was not the issue it is today. It was designed to work on operating systems like Windows 98 and Windows ME. Would you let people use Windows ME on your network? No! So why are you letting them use a browser that was built for it?! (more…)

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