Google's redesigned tab page annoys some Chrome users

Google last week started rolling out a redesigned new tab page for Chrome, making good on a promise from last month when it offered the revamp to users running rougher-edged versions of its browser.

Most users gave the new look a failing grade. "Fail, fail, fail," said Philip Wright, one of those who commented on the announcement.

Google characterized the addition as a way to speed up search.

"We're rolling out a feature that can make searching faster and simpler with a streamlined New Tab page," said the Chrome team on its Google+ page. "If you use Google as your default search engine, the next time you open a new tab in Chrome the search bar will be front and center ... [and] you'll also be able to check out current Google Doodles."

The new tab page appears when users press Ctrl-T (Windows) or Command-T (OS X) in Chrome. All browsers offer a similar new tab page that, at a minimum, shows thumbnails of the user's most visited websites. The feature, which debuted on Opera, has been copied by all its rivals, including Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, and Apple's Safari.

Firefox was the last to acquire a graphical new tab page when in June 2012 Mozilla released Firefox 13.

Chrome's new tab page redesign sports a prominent Google search field as the only real difference between it and its predecessor. The page still displays eight thumbnails of the user's most-called-on sites.

But Chrome users just didn't get it.

"If you're on Chrome, why wouldn't you just use the omnibar?" asked commenter Neil Slater, using an alternate name for "omnibox," Google's label for the combined search-address bar at the top of the browser window. "To use this new search box it takes an extra mouse click to put the cursor into the box. The cursor's already by default in the omnibar on opening a new tab."

Many commenters dismissed the change as useless, with some asking how to revert to the previous design. Others were dismayed that Google moved the Chrome Apps button—which calls up a display of the browser's installed Web apps—to the bookmark bar.

Google has faced resistance from Chrome users before when it has proposed redesigns of the new tab page. In April, Google backtracked from a refreshed new tab page that had reduced the number of thumbnails from eight to four, inserted a large Google search box, shifted the Web apps view to a button, and dumped other features, including the ability to view recently closed tabs, from the page.

Most of those changes, however, were implemented in the final new tab page that began reaching users Tuesday. The most visible that did not was the four-thumbnail view.

Users who want to restore the previous design should type "chrome://flags" in the omnibox—minus the quotation marks—locate the "Enable Instant Extended API" setting in the long list, and change it from "Enable" to "Disable."

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Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news.
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Google's Gmail scanning unclear to users, judge finds

A U.S. federal judge allowed a class-action suit against Google to proceed, saying the company's terms of service are unclear when describing how it scans Gmail content in order to deliver advertisements.

Google had filed a motion to dismiss the suit, which alleges that the company intercepted and read email while in transit in order to deliver advertisements and create user profiles and models since 2008. The plaintiffs alleged the company violated federal and state wiretapping laws.

The suit, which is being heard in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, further contends non-Gmail users who sent email to Gmail users were also subject to illegal interception.

In her ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh wrote that Google's terms of service and privacy policies do not explicitly say that the company intercepts users' email to create user profiles or deliver targeted advertising.

Although Google revised its terms of service and privacy policy in 2012, Koh wrote "that a reasonable Gmail user who read the Privacy Policies would not have necessarily understood that her emails were being intercepted to create user profiles or to provide targeted advertisements."

Google said in a statement it was disappointed with the decision and is considering its options. "Automated scanning lets us provide Gmail users with security and spam protection, as well as great features like Priority Inbox."

Google, which had filed a motion to dismiss, maintains that the automated scanning is fully disclosed to Gmail users and that features such as search and filtering would not be possible without it.

Past court rulings have also held that all email users imply consent to automated processing since email couldn't be sent otherwise, Google argued in the motion.

Koh also rejected Google's contention that non-Gmail users gave their implied consent to scanning of their communications.

"Google has cited no case that stands for the proposition that users who send emails impliedly consent to interceptions and use of their communications by third parties other than the intended recipient of the email," Koh wrote.

Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocate group based in Washington, D.C., called Koh's ruling a "tremendous victory for online privacy."

"The court rightly rejected Google's tortured logic that you have to accept intrusions of privacy if you want to send email," said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director, in a news release. "Companies like Google can't simply do whatever they want with our data and emails."

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

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Google's Hummingbird algorithm continues poaching pageviews

For years, search engines have trained us to speak in certain cadences, using certain words, and to pick out our own results from a list of relevant queries. Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm strides further away from that, to a more natural interaction with a search engine.

Hummingbird, which has crept into Google’s search engine for about a month now, provides better answers to more complex queries, the search company’s executives say. Over time, Google has continued poaching pageviews away from content partners by answering more and more questions itself; that trend appears to be continuing with Google’s latest improvements.

GoogleGoogle's new comparison engine. (Click to enlarge.)

To celebrate 15 years in the search business, Google highlighted the next step in its roadmap: intelligence features, going beyond some of the anticipatory work Google enabled with its Google Now offering. The current design actually plays more into the mobile space than on the desktop, with two new innovations specifically designed to return answers, not results: a new comparison engine, and better filters that leads more naturally into a “conversation” with Google on your mobile device. Google hosted a press event at its "Google garage,"—the Mountain View, Calif. home originally rented to Larry Page and Sergey Brin by Anne Wojcicki, before she married Brin.

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As an example of the new comparison engine, Google suggested users ask Google to “compare butter with olive oil” or “compare Earth vs. Neptune”. Comparisons have traditionally one of the strong points of rival search engine Wolfram Alpha, so it’s interesting to see Google take a stab at ousting Wolfram from one of its traditional strengths.

How Microsoft filters queries for, say, Impressionist artists.

With the new filters, users can command their phone to “tell me more about Impressionist artists,” where Google will provide more context about the artists, as well as some alternative genres. While Google hasn’t quite copied Bing, it is interesting to note the similarities in context and design between Google’s example in the mobile space and what Microsoft’s Bing search on the desktop returns.

Google's new filter in action, with Impressionist painters. (Click to enlarge.)

Google also promised a “single, more unified design” in its mobile search app—again, with an emphasis on providing its own answers, not results.

“We’ll keep improving Google Search so it does a little bit more of the hard work for you,” Amit Singhal, senior vice president for search at Google, wrote in a blog post. “This means giving you the best possible answers, making it easy to have a conversation and helping out before you even have to ask. Hopefully, we’ll save you a few minutes of hassle each day. So keep asking Google tougher questions—it keeps us on our toes! After all, we’re just getting started.”

According to Singhal, with more complex queries, the Hummingbird algorithm can better understand concepts, rather than words, as well as relationships between concepts.

If we draw a line between Google Now, Hummingbird, and beyond, it appears that Google sees itself more and more as the agent with whom you will interact, rather than as a gateway to other pages hosted elsewhere on the Web. What's next for Google's R&D department? Medical diagnoses? A customized voting guide? Or an existential search engine that can provide suggested answers to the question, "Why are we here?"

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Mobile browsers get a workout, with Google's Chrome leading

Mobile browsing continued to post gains last month at the expense of personal computers, a trend that has put Google into the second spot behind Microsoft as the browser maker with the longest reach, a Web metrics company said Sunday.

According to Net Applications, an estimated 13.4 percent of all users accessed the Internet in August from a smartphone or tablet, breaking a six-month-old record. Most of the rest of the world's online users—85.8 percent—went online with a desktop browser on a personal computer.

The increase in mobile browsing has pushed Google past Mozilla as the browser maker with the second-largest combined desktop-plus-mobile user share.

Google's combined user share of 17.5 percent was earned on the basis of its No. 2 spot in mobile generated by the Android and Chrome browsers. That's in contrast to Net Applications' estimate of Chrome's desktop share of 16 percent, down more than 1.7 percentage points in August.

Apple was the other browser maker that benefited most from mobile, with a combined user share of 12.2 percent, of which nearly two-thirds came from Safari on iOS, the mobile operating system that powers all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla's Firefox remain the two browsers whose usage shares have been hit hardest by the shift toward mobile, as Microsoft continues to struggle to post global gains in smartphones and tablets, and Mozilla has only recently gotten into the mobile market with its Firefox OS.

IE continued to dominate the desktop, with an August share of 57.6 percent, but its faint appearance in Net Applications' mobile statistics lowered its combined share to 49.6 percent. That's slightly up from March, when Computerworld last visited the subject, but the increase was due to a resurgent IE on traditional PCs, where the browser has returned to levels last seen in April 2011.

Firefox's total share again suffered from lack of any mobile punch: Mozilla has an Android version of Firefox in play, but its share was so small that Net Applications did not even note it. Mozilla's Firefox OS, a browser-based mobile operating system that has garnered support from carriers in China, Spain and elsewhere, has only recently started shipping on a limited number of phones. For August, Firefox's combined share was 16.1 percent, several percentage points lower than its desktop-only number and down from March's 17.7 percent.

Norwegian browser maker Opera Software bulked up its very small desktop user share with an almost-as-large contribution from its Opera Mini mobile browser. Opera's combined share for August was 2.5 percent.

Mobile browsing overall is on an upswing again after several months of stalled or declining share. August's 13.4 percent was a new record for mobile, cracking the February standard. Projections based on the three-month trends hint that mobile will probably account for 20 percent of all browsing by May 2014.

Net Applications measures browser usage on smartphones, tablets and personal computers by tabulating approximately 160 million unique visitors each month who browse to the sites it monitors for customers.

When desktop and mobile browser user shares are combined, Google takes the second spot from Mozilla, and Apple's Safari is a stronger fourth-place rival than its minor desktop presence indicates. (Data: Net Applications.)

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Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news.
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Google's rivals want to review new concessions in EU antitrust case

Google's rivals on Monday called for a second full review of the search giant's latest proposed measures aimed at avoiding a fine from the European Commission for allegedly breaking competition rules.

Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia received new proposals from Google last week, his office said Monday, and now the search giant's rivals want a chance to comment on them.

Google has been under investigation by the European Commission since November 2010, after rivals accused the search giant of directing users to its own services by reducing the visibility of competing websites and services in search results. It was also accused of content-scraping and imposing contractual restrictions that prevent advertisers from moving their online campaigns to rival search engines.

In April Google proposed a set of measures to avoid sanctions, including labelling links to its own sites in search results. It also promised to include links to rival search engines for specialist restaurant search results that generate revenue for Google, remove exclusivity provisions from advertising contracts for five years and offer tools to prevent web scraping by allowing content owners to opt out.

The Commission gave interested parties the opportunity to comment on the April proposals, a process it calls "market testing". Most rivals and complainants said the measures were not good enough.

Now FairSearch Europe, a group made up of companies that have complained about Google, says that the new proposals should also be market tested.

"Given the failure of Google to make a serious offer last time around, we believe it is necessary that customers and competitors of Google be consulted in a full, second market test," said Thomas Vinje, FairSearch Europe's legal spokesman in a statement.

However, under Commission rules, Almunia is not obliged to run a second market test.

Google spokesman Al Verney said that the company is working to address the Commission's four main areas of concern.

The Commission can impose a fine of up to 10 percent of a company's annual turnover if it believes its concerns have not been addressed. It can also order changes in the company's operations to remove any antitrust breaches. However Almunia is reluctant to go down this time-consuming route in the fast-moving IT sector, preferring to reach mutual agreement with companies under the so-called Article 9 provision. Once measures are accepted by the Commission, they become legally binding.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @BrusselsGeek or email tips and comments to jennifer_baker@idg.com.

Jennifer Baker reports on the European Union: Commission, Parliament, technology policy, regulation, and competition.
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Australian Sex Party gets no love from Google's AdWords

The Australian Sex Party, a political organization, has a hard time getting some love from Google.

The search engine has rejected several AdWords advertisements related to the party's position on marijuana legalization and voluntary euthanasia. AdWords is Google's pay-per-click product that shows advertisements related to keyword searches and content.

The Australian Sex Party, founded in 2009, is fielding 54 candidates in Australia's upcoming federal election, which will take place on Sept. 7. The party also supports same sex marriage, the decriminalization of personal drug use and better public transport.

The Sex Party has requested a manual review of its AdWords advertisements, which were placed through Google's automated systems, said Fiona Patten, the group's president.

"We are not saying 'Buy marijuana here'," said Patten who is a senate candidate for the state of Victoria. "We are not promoting anything illegal. We are a political party."

One of the ads that was rejected read: "Sex Party. Regulate and Tax Marijuana. Your Life, Your Choice," followed by the party's website address. Patten said her group has budgeted AU$30,000 (US$26,800) to $50,000 for digital election-related advertising, the majority of which will be spent with Google.

A Google spokesman in Sydney said the company does not comment on individual advertisers, but that it was looking into the matter.

Patten said even if the advertisements are approved, the Sex Party has lost out on several days of advertising prior to the election. Even if Google spends 24 hours reviewing an advertisement, "you're losing a considerable amount of time," she said.

"If we are not able to share our policies via online methods, that really limits how we can get our message out there in this election," Patten said. "As a small party, you do have to rely on getting your message out in online forums. We can't afford the television advertising, the radio and print advertising that the major parties can budget for."

Last year, Facebook rejected advertisements bought by the group, but after a manual review, allowed them to be shown, Patten said.

It's not the first time the Australian Sex Party has encountered difficulties in buying ads with Google.

In the run up to a 2010 election campaign, Google rejected some of the party's advertisements due to the use of the word "sex." In July 2012, Google rejected the group's advertisements because the ads showed a donation button, which is not allowed if the advertiser does not have a tax-exempt status.

Australian political parties are not eligible for tax-exempt status. The misunderstanding was resolved only one day prior to a by-election.

As a result, the Australian Sex Party filed letters of complaint in September 2012 with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The ACCC rejected the complaint, while the DOJ never responded, Patten said.

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Following Google's lead, Mozilla considers rejecting long-lived digital certificates

Mozilla is considering the possibility of rejecting as invalid SSL certificates issued after July 1, 2012, with a validity period of more than 60 months. Google already made the decision to block such certificates in Chrome starting early next year.

“As a result of further analysis of available, publicly discoverable certificates, as well as the vibrant discussion among the CA/B Forum [Certificate Authority/Browser Forum] membership, we have decided to implement further programmatic checks in Google Chrome and the Chromium Browser in order to ensure Baseline Requirements compliance,” Ryan Sleevi, a member of the Google Chrome Team said Monday in a message to the CA/B Forum mailing list.

The checks will be added to the development and beta releases of Google Chrome at the beginning of 2014. The changes are expected in the stable release of Chrome during the first quarter of next year, Sleevi said.

The Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates, sometimes simply referred to as the Baseline Requirements, is a set of guidelines agreed upon by all certificate authorities (CAs) and browser vendors that are members of the CA/B Forum.

Version 1.0 of the Baseline Requirements went into effect on July 1, 2012, and states that “Certificates issued after the Effective Date MUST have a Validity Period no greater than 60 months.” It also says that certificates to be issued after April 1, 2015, will need to have a validity period no greater than 39 months, but there are some clearly defined exceptions to this requirement.

The shortening of certificate validity period is a proactive measure that would allow for a timely implementation of changes made to the requirements in the future. It would be hard for future requirements, especially those with a security impact, to have a practical effect if older certificates that aren’t compliant with them would remain valid for 10 more years.

Google identified 2038 certificates that were issued after July 1, 2012, and have validity periods longer than 60 months, in violation of the current Baseline Requirements.

“We encourage CAs that have engaged in this unfortunate practice, which appears to be a very limited subset of CAs, to reach out to affected customers and inform them of the upcoming changes,” Sleevi said referring to the fact that Chrome will start blocking those certificates in the beginning of 2014.

On Thursday, a discussion was started on the Mozilla bug tracker on whether the company should enforce a similar block in its products.

“Everyone agrees such certs, when newly issued, are incompatible with the Baseline Requirements,” said Gervase Markham, who deals with issues of project governance at Mozilla, on the bug tracker. “Some CAs have argued that when reissued, this is not so, but Google does not agree with them. We should consider making the same change.”

Daniel Veditz, the security lead at Mozilla said that he sees why CAs might have a problem with this from a business and legal standpoint. If a CA already sold a “product”—in this case a certificate—in the past with certain terms and would later violate those terms by deciding to reduce the certificate’s validity period, they might be in hot water, he said.

“Although it does seem as if reissuing as a 60-month cert with the promise to reissue with the balance later ought to be satisfactory,” Vediz said.

Markham agreed. “No one is asking CAs to not give customers what they’ve paid for in terms of duration; it will just need to be 2 (or more) separate certs,” he said. “I agree that changing certs once every 5 years rather than every 10 might be a minor inconvenience for customers who use the same web server hardware and software for more than 5 years, but I’m not sure how large a group that is.”

Mozilla’s PR firm in the U.K. could not immediately provide a statement from the company regarding this issue.

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