The Googlization of Culture, doubleplusungood Options

[PalePhoenix]

Web search leader Google Inc. has applied for U.S. and international patents on technology to rank stories on its news site based on the quality of the news source, according to patent applications obtained by Reuters Thursday.

Apparently, now even rankings are up for grabs on ownership. When I mention "Googolization," I'm not just talking about the corporate entity, but an all-consuming monstrosity of our Information Age. When was the last time you saw all they were up to?

This post has been edited by PalePhoenix: Nov 17 2005, 09:24 PM

[PalePhoenix]

Google has apparently leased an airstrip mere minutes from their corporate offices in California. Hardly surprising, given the amount of capital and brand-power they have to throw around, but they're being very hush-hush about the details of the plane that's supposed to land there, like it's better than Air Force One, or something.

It probably is.

Google’s billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are intensely private about their private jet, which recently secured landing rights at Moffett Field. And tracking the reconditioned Boeing 767-200 is not easy.

The plane is registered to a limited liability company called Blue City Holdings, according to F.A.A. records. Meanwhile, the deal that NASA cut is with another limited liability company, called H211, about which there is very little public information. But NASA said H211 was tied to Google’s top execs, including Eric Schmidt, the Google chief executive. And it said the deal allowed planes owned by H211 principals, including the Boeing 767 and two Gulfstream Vs, to take off, land and be parked at Moffett. (Incidentally, no other private jets have such landing rights, but NASA said the deal is non-exclusive, presumably opening the door for others to try to get similar deals.) [read more]

This is not my beautiful spaceport.

Sorry, but it looks like the world's biggest vagina. Actually, it's Virgin Galactic's proposed landing field, for all those ne'er-do-well astronauts willing to shell out $100K per ticket for a brief ride beyond our tedious and polluted atmosphere. To wit, it doesn't actually exist, and when it does, it won't GO anywhere. Presently, you can pay a lot less for some padded cargo planes to do a 30-second free-fall, if "weightlessness" has been your life's dream.

Warning: Not only available to the morbidly obese or cancer-ridden kiddies sponsored by the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

[JBlueEyes]

I guess it's just a coincidence that you made the connection between Google and NASA. Looks like they're trying to get their own piece of the moon, too. They don't just want to map it (Your Location: Next to the five millionth gray rock, to the left of the seven thousandth big, dark hole. Get Driving Directions!), they actually want to send something there.

[irishblessing]

More from the "Google Wants to Own Everything" front, except I can't figure out if they're being noble and the librarians paranoid, or the other way around:

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

Google pays to scan the books and does not directly profit from the resulting Web pages, although the books make its search engine more useful and more valuable. The libraries can have their books scanned again by another company or organization for dissemination more broadly... (read more)

It seems to me like a good thing that they should offer to scan books and to compile a digital library of materials that might otherwise not be available at a public branch near you. It happens a lot more often than you think, and not just because the title has already been loaned out. I also can't figure out why any library would object to another resource or form of reference material on any grounds.

It almost sounds like they don't want the computer realm encroaching on their territory of dusty shelves and off-limits archives. Of all the weird things Google has been up to lately, this SOUNDS like the most philantropic. Can anybody figure out a way it might not be good for everybody?

[Semperfidel]

The "Googlization" must include all those tailor-marketed ads we see in Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and others, right? Looks like it's time to stop letting them datamine our correspondence, because it's just creeping us out.

F.T.C. to Review Online Ads and Privacy

Whitney Chianese was exchanging e-mail messages with her mother a few weeks ago, discussing the recent death of her grandmother, when advertisements for health care products began popping up on her computer screen.

Ms. Chianese, who lives in Rye, N.Y., was taken aback, and realized she had been naïve in thinking her e-mail chat was as private as if they were sitting the couch of her mother’s home in Atlanta.

“It was like Big Brother,” said Ms. Chianese, 28. “It became too much. Is there a middle road? One needs to be found.”

Many people agree. The Federal Trade Commission will hold meetings today and tomorrow about online privacy. The questions they will entertain include how much control people need or want over the vast trove of information that corporate America routinely collects about people as they click from site to site on the Internet. (read more)

There are some times though, I think people should learn how to log out of sites, delete their cookies, and monitor their Internet connections a little better. With AOL, you really can't help but be tracked, no matter how well you cover your tracks, because you're using them as a portal. I don't know anyone who uses their browser anymore, but even if you open another one, they can still see what sites you visit. It's like asking to have keyloggers and spyware, then complaining when they hand you a new brand of soap when you're in the shower.

[Galahad]

Google wants your blood. Literally.

Google is backing a startup, 23andMe. 23andMe calls itself the "first personal genome service." I'm not sure how accurate this really is, since deCODE Genetics recently launched deCODEme, which seems similar.

23andMe charges $999 for a kit (it's $985 for deCODEme). They both provide a kit; after returning it, you will have access to your genome online. Supposedly, once your genome is decoded, you will be able to look at it online, and also delve into what exactly it means. Meaning, according to their website, users can:

1. Search and explore their genomes;
2. Learn how the latest research studies relate directly to traits identified in their genome;
3. Compare their genomes to family and friends who are also 23andMe participants;
4. Discover their genetic roots and find where they sit on the tree of human genetic history; and
5. Give individuals the option to actively participate in a new research approach.

I'm assuming that for 3) above you'd have to give people permission to look at your genome, but that brings up a point: security. All the data breaches we see every day; despite the amount of security on websites, it's something to worry about.

I wouldn't worry about the data being sold, but being hacked? Yes, I would worry... (read more)

Who needs a hacker when you've got the British government to give up 25 million of its own citizens. They dare call themselves the Nanny Nation!

If that isn't bad enough, scientific ethicists (and other hacks) are saying this will all lead to a new kind of "genetic hypochondria" where people will worry about diseases and conditions they could have. Someday. Maybe.

How do you "opt out" and do you have to do it manually?

[Semperfidel]

Google to spend hundreds of millions on developing renewable energy

Google Inc. says it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop renewable energy as part of an ambitious plan to clean the environment and reduce the company's own power bill.

The Mountain View company said Tuesday that it will open its deep pockets to foster innovation in solar, wind and geothermal technology in the hopes of making green energy cheaper than power produced by burning coal.

To start the initiative, Google said that it will invest tens of millions of dollars in renewable power, spread over research and development and related investments, in 2008.

"Solar isn't currently cheaper than coal," Google co-founder Larry Page said in a conference call. "That's the point of this - to get it there..." (read more)

At some point around 2057, Google will control all that you see and hear. Don't like it? They'll just have to track you down for a little convincing.

[JBlueEyes]

The New Scientist is suggesting that our minds are really just big search engines. If so, mine's more like Yahoo.

Do our brains work like Google?

Google's patented and powerful search algorithm, PageRank, may mimic the way the human brain retrieves information.

Our memory for words can be modelled as a network in which each point represents a different word, with each linked to words that relate to it. Psychologist Tom Griffiths and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, wondered whether the ease with which the brain retrieves words is similar to the way that websites are ranked by PageRank: by the number of sites that link to them.

It seems it might. In tests against other word-retrieval algorithms, PageRank most clearly matched the human model (Psychological Science, vol 18, p 1069). The results suggest human memory studies could be improved by examining the tricks that search engines employ, and vice versa, says Griffiths. (source)

Google can't do at least one thing our brains can, and that's weed out false or useless information, but it thinks about porn and shopping nearly as often as we do.

[Semperfidel]

"Behavioral targeting" is getting a little spooky. Basically, anything you do on Google is being recorded somehow, even the page you were on before you visit them.

As Ask Erases Little, Google and Others Keep Writing About You

With Ask.com introducing the AskEraser — a switch that will stop the site from collecting information about a user — it’s worth checking in on the real state of play with the accumulation of data online.

As usual, the reality is very far from the public perception. Ask is far down on the list of sites that anyone who cares about privacy would be concerned about. It is hardly pervasive, so it doesn’t collect much data at all. And Ask doesn’t even run its own advertising system (it uses Google) so it doesn’t have much reason to collect data.

Of course, Ask is simply trying to gain marketing points by differentiating itself from Google, which to some embodies the erosion of privacy in the Internet world.

Google indeed collects a lot of data. It sees the bulk of the searches on the Internet and an increasing amount of other activity. And it obsessively files away most every scrap of data it receives. (Google will say that much of this data doesn’t include the personal identity of the user it is tracking. In fact, it actually has enough pieces of information to identify a lot of users if it really wanted to.) (read more)

This would be why I don't install any "helpful" Google tools on my browser or computer, and why I always log out or use a separate browser to search for anything that might be called into question at a later time. It's kind of sad that I have to do that for the world's leading search engine, and I don't consider myself excessively paranoid, but they really can't be trusted to keep data from the government or from private companies that would then give the government access or just "misplace" the data themselves.

[PalePhoenix]

A new report shows 47 percent of adult Internet users have Googled themselves. The study, from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, says people are more comfortable posting personal information on the Web. At the same time, it has become easier for others to find information about you, whether it is employers or identity thieves. The study shows only 3 percent of all self-Googlers do it regularly. Researchers say it's probably better if people were a bit vainer... (NPR)

I'd be surprised if every single person with a computer hasn't done it at least once, and they're just not telling. Because, where there's vanity, there's shame.

As for Google's search engines working like our brains, it's a lot more like an autistic or mentally retarded person who can sort things on an assembly line or from a box of puzzle pieces. The parts and shapes may match, but that's all they are, just language objects. The system(s) by which it returns "popular" or "relevant" results, however, is often so useless as to be nearly corrupt in their operation. Like nearly all other engines, it promotes certain results or is handicapped by site design. A "real" brain would be able to adapt to those inconsistencies, whereas Google is still heavily reliant on hard coding and fallible human volunteers to feed it a lot of data. However, "discrimination," with regard to these data, would send up more of a hue and cry than to let it slog through pages of useless results. Your mind filters out a lot more than it processes.

[Galahad]

Turns out, at least one college is offering a whole class on famo, or "How to Google Yourself for Fame and Profit." It's a stupid term. They should have gone with the more Orwellian sounding "minifame," or the Warholian "fifteen megabytes."

It's the week before finals, and Jamie Wilkinson's students are getting nervous. No matter how many videos they post, how many blogs they subscribe to, how many friends they sign up, it just isn't working. They aren't reaching enough people; they still aren't famous enough.

And no, they aren't goofing off.

On the contrary, becoming famous is the main point of Wilkinson's class, organized through Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. All semester long his students have monitored their own progress, fully aware that a piece of Internet-scouring software, not their teacher, will be issuing the final grades. And as the 15 students regularly check the class's blog for the latest rankings, Wilkinson has structured his curriculum to give them tips on how to get — and stay — famous in this increasingly saturated virtual world... (read more)

Their site is worth visiting, even if it does look and read like a poser-ific blog. No doubt, this mention and that link will only increase their vanity points. The Time article didn't hurt, either.

[irishblessing]

Microsoft is making a bid for its failing rival, Yahoo, and they're not gonna take "no" for an answer.

Microsoft Corp. is making an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo Inc., an Internet icon and one the best known Web portals, in a move to boost its competitive edge against Google Inc. in the online services market.

The unexpected announcement Friday comes as Yahoo and Microsoft have fallen behind Google in the race to capture online advertising dollars. The deal could also give lift to the entire technology market. (source)

- - - - -

Bear hug letters are an art form. They are designed to put an unwilling takeover target on notice that they are no longer safe, but to fall short of being blatantly hostile.

Microsoft’s bear-hug letter to Yahoo, made public early Friday along with Microsoft’s unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid, is no different. It contains all the nice-nice language you typically see in these letters (this is the hug) as well as a warning that there is a bear waiting to come out.

Microsoft states in its letter that: Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal. (source)

Can we say "ominous," boys and girls? 'Cos if there's a more ancient evil than Google, it has to be Micro$oft. While I could have sworn there were still pending anti-trust suits against MS, and Google is running headlong into the same territory, there's got to be something inherently unhealthy (for the public) about technology giants cannibalizing each other.

[PalePhoenix]

Here comes the science, kids:

Have you been wondering what had been going through the heads of Microsoft executives as they prepared to make the bid for Yahoo?

In December, I got my hands on three confidential documents that Microsoft used in its lobbying against the Google-DoubleClick deal, and I posted them on Bits. (See that post here.)

Re-reading those documents now show that Microsoft was clear with the Federal Trade Commission that an approval of Google-DoubleClick might lead it to take drastic action–like it is doing now with its bid for Yahoo.

Microsoft wrote in one of the documents:

“If the transaction is allowed to proceed, Google will control so much of the publishers’ inventory and such a large portion of advertisers that Internet competitors trying to catch up will not have access to sufficient inventory and advertisers to mount a credible competitive challenge to Google.”

Microsoft warned that the DoubleClick merger would leave Google delivering almost 78 percent of all non-search ads served to third-party Web pages, on a revenue basis. That means that a combined Google-DoubleClick gives Google dominance over more than three-quarters of sites that do not have their own technology for display ad serving. Microsoft and Yahoo are the only two companies who have their own ad-serving... (read more)

What is not known is the precise number of firstborn sons each of the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have promised to the Devil (both are married, but neither have produced offspring...hmm), whether Bill Gates actually is Lucifer, or why the FTC ever allowed either of them to get nearly 80% of the online ad market to begin with. Only your hairdresser knows.

[irishblessing]

Look! The GOP are on the Internets now!

Google provides "innovation" to the GOP, hides head in shame

The Republican National Convention has released a press release touting Google as the "Official Innovation Provider" to the 2008 Convention. Google will "enhance the GOP's online presence with new applications, search tools, and interactive video. In addition, Google will help generate buzz and excitement in advance of the convention through its proven online marketing techniques." I can only imagine the childlike joy that Google will bring to delegates.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer -- and noted Obama supporter -- claims Google is "pleased to work with the Republican National Convention to give citizens around the world easy access to convention information and new ways to engage in the event." I bet. Google is so pleased, it didn't feel it necessary to issue its own press release touting the partnership... (read more)

I'm only worried that this will give Republicants an unfair advantage in search results and other kinds of linkage. Probably not going to happen, given their mixed affiliations, but Google really wants a hand in everything these days, don't they.

[ganymede]

At last, I have discovered evidence that The Google has always been with us, answering our most insipid questions and helping kids cheat on their homework. This "paleo-future" ad from 1964 should be proof enough that a typewriter and a viewscreen were all you needed for Related Links in your search for the meaning of life.

[Semperfidel]

The Air Force lawyers is bitchslapping YouTube with a DMCA notice:

The Air Force's law-firm has sent an illegal DMCA take-down notice to YouTube, demanding the removal of a publicly available video promoting its Cyber Command project. Material produced by federal agencies is not copyrighted -- cannot be copyrighted, by statute -- so there's no basis for the Air Force's representatives to swear (on penalty of perjury, no less!) that this video infringed its copyright.

It's cyber war! Lawyers representing the Air Force's elite electronic warriors have sent YouTube a DMCA takedown notice demanding the removal of the 30-second spot the Air Force created to promote its nascent Cyber Command. We'd uploaded the video to share with THREAT LEVEL readers. (BoingBoing)

Sounds like somebody at the DoD is getting fussy about people sharing (and possibly laughing at) their training vids and other, even more embarrassing footage.

[Bryan9000]

Already yanked from their database of "street-level" images, Google's mapping feature captures another fine moment in humanity's struggle to become at one with God:

[JBlueEyes]

Google's well-known catchphrase/motto "Don't be evil" may just be another soulless marketing ploy:

Don't Be Evil or don't lose value?

As Google comes under ever increasing scrutiny for the power it has over our lives, the web giant is tiptoeing back from its long-held corporate motto, Don't Be Evil.

Dominating internet advertising and search have allowed the company to embark on a seemingly endless expansion into all manner of internet products, including email, video sharing, online mapping, mobile phone software, social networking and office productivity.

But while Google's revenues in 2007 were 37 times greater than in 2002 and its headcount has ballooned to well over 16,000 employees, the quest to provide ever-increasing returns to shareholders - the primary objective of any public company - has at times conflicted with its perceived core values.

Some have interpreted the ceaseless criticisms of Google's privacy policies and its co-operation with totalitarian regimes as a sign the Don't Be Evil goal is unattainable for a profit-driven company. At the very least, the corporate motto has encouraged the public and the press to hold Google to a higher standard... (read more)

Love the Google! The Google is your friend!

Personally, I don't entirely see how Google's becoming such a monstrosity, but they ARE in every nook and cranny of the internet these days, with all signs pointing to their continued domination, even monopolization, of the markets they already occupy. With Microsoft and Yahoo distracted, fighting each other, I can understand how it looks like Google's using the downtime to creep into our lives both on- and offline.

[irishblessing]

Love the Google! The Google is your friend!

Not if you're really interested in human rights. They voted down two proposals that might have made them a better corporation.

In March Google's board of directors indicated they opposed a ban on Internet censorship as well as the creation of a committee that would review the company's policies on human rights, according to the company's proxy statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and released publicly Tuesday.

However, shareholders and rights groups including Amnesty International, who have previously stated that Amnesty: Tech companies aid censorship, continue to push Google to improve its policies in countries known for human rights abuses and limits on freedom of speech. One of the shareholder proposals was from the office of the Comptroller of New York City, which oversees the New York City employees retirement system. The group holds US$200 million worth of Google stock.

The proposal, presented by an Amnesty worker, suggested that Google institute a series of policies to protect freedom of access to the Internet. The policies should include using all legal means to resist demands for censorship, informing users when the company has complied with requests for censorship, and hosting information that can identify users only in countries that don't restrict the Internet.

[PalePhoenix]

As Google tries to muscle in on the social networking phenomenon (you'd think that would have died down by now, wouldn't you)...

To socialize these days, hundreds of millions of people every month visit networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

But what if the Web itself operated as a social network?

Google announced yesterday another step in what its engineers see as that inevitable evolution. A new, free service from the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant will allow any Web site to become a social site.

Any Web page, whether it is devoted to curling or pizza or a folk singer, could allow visitors to meet and connect with "friends" who visit that site. Like any such major network today, a Web page using the service could present users with the names and pictures of friends and potential friends. Those people could then post messages to one another... (read more)

...Charter Communications informs its users that it will be scanning their internet usage habits and delivering targeted ads. How Googlish of them. And they say it's a good thing.

[Galahad]

At least one community is taking a stand against Google's semi-invasive "Street View" map enhancements. They've asked Google to remove these images and Google's complied. The residents' thinking is that their homes and even their roads are privately owned and maintained. Okaaay. What happens if there's a fire or the police are needed in there? Do the taxes for these services, paid by neighbors outside their precious community, not get used when it comes to driving on those streets?

North Oaks' unique situation, in which the roads are privately owned by the residents and the city enforces a trespassing ordinance, may have made it the first city in the country to request that the online search engine remove images from Google Maps... (read more)

[Semperfidel]

"Google runs a complex auction-based system that determines which ads will appear where, and in what order. Every time the team alters the formulas that select and rank ads, Mr. Fox can run a test and quickly see the effect of the changes on users, advertisers and Google’s revenue — which, in this year’s first quarter, came in at the rate of more than $2 million an hour." Good to know, good to know. What's sick is, you know Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco are making more.

[Galahad]

Google Genocide.

[ganymede]

Chalk one up on the "good" side for Google's fight in the net neutrality debate:

Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt--Senior Policy Director for Google--announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs:

"We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting -- that they think certain services are being tampered with," Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco. (BoingBoing)

Sure, it's another "toolbar" they want you to install, and who knows what else it does, but there has to be some way to tell for sure if your ISP is fiddling with your browsing habits.

[Galahad]

Score one for Google, but mostly for merely existing, and for keeping records on everybody who uses their search engine. They may be called upon in a court case to help define "obscenity."

Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards? That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values.

The Internet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm... (read more)

Well, we all already know porn and shopping will top any list of terms, but foregone conclusions don't always make for a good courtroom defense.

[irishblessing]

Users of Gmail now will soon have the option to see which computers are logged into their accounts and can read their e-mail, Erwin D’Souza, a Gmail engineer wrote in a blog post Monday.

Like most Web-based e-mail programs, Gmail gives users the choice to keep a given machine signed into their account so that they don’t have to retype their passwords each time they want to check their mail. But this means that if you forget to log off when you check your mail at a public computer or at a friend’s house, your electronic life may be open for any passerby to read.

Google’s solution, being rolled out slowly, gives users a link that will show all the different machines that are currently logged into a particular Gmail account. It displays what sort of machine it is (browser, cellphone, etc.), the I.P. address, and how long it has been logged in. You can look up an I.P. address to find out what Internet provider or corporate network the user is on, which may help you figure out whether that computer should still be able to connect to your e-mail. Most importantly, Google lets you log off any computer that you don’t want reading your mail... (read more)

What they don't offer to explain is how other people are reading your mail in the first place, if it's not you. Certainly not the 'why' of it. Well, at least it's a step in the right direction for privacy protection, even if it would be simpler just to automatically log out anyone who hasn't just logged in. I wonder whether it will also show the "history" of other logins, if they might not be yours. In all, it sounds like a public relations-ish way to patch a loophole, poorly.

[Bryan9000]

Teh Googlebot knows all, sees all. It is watching you masturbate.

[irishblessing]

The new Google browser, Chrome, is out for Windoze based machines (there are plans for a Mac and a Linux version, later on). Word has it that Micro$oft is not too pleased, but then, neither are all the people who carefully read Chrome's end-user license agreement.

The terms include a section giving Google “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.” That seems pretty extreme for a browser, doesn’t it? (read more)

[JBlueEyes]

Score one for Google, on the gay rights front at least:

Our position on California's No on 8 campaign

9/26/2008 03:23:00 PM

As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

[Galahad]

Well, we know how the Prop 8 thing went down, but did you know the entire Internet was malware?

For about an hour on Saturday morning, Google listed every site on the Internet as malware.

After the initial problem was fixed, it took a couple of hours to iron out who actually was to blame--Google or a nonprofit known as StopBadware.org.

TechCrunch and CNET reported around 7 a.m. PST that every site found via Google search was flagged with this message: "This site may harm your computer." As part of Google's malware protection, clicking on a flagged site's link would pull up an additional warning. Although a link could simply be cut and paste, Google's warning was unnerving enough to keep some people from pushing their luck... (read more)

The world seems a little less secure if Google can get snagged like that. Then again, we have no idea how many people were looking for free porn on a Saturday morning.