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Posts tagged "Google"

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Google wants secure open-source software to be the future
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After attending the recent White House Open Source Software Security Summit, Google is now calling for a public-private partnership to not only fund but also staff essential open-source projects.

In a new blog post, president of global affairs and chief legal officer at both Google and Alphabet, Kent Walker laid out the search giant's plans to better secure the open-source software ecosystem.

For too long, businesses and governments have taken comfort in the assumption that open source software is generally secure due to its transparent nature. While many believe that more eyes watching can help detect and resolve problems in the open source community, some projects actually don't have many eyes on them while others have few or none at all.

To its credit, Google has been working to raise awareness of the state of open source security and the company has invested millions in developing frameworks and new protective tools. However, the Log4j vulnerability and others before it have shown that more work is needed across the ecosystem to develop new models to maintain and secure open source software.

Public-private partnership 

In his blog post, Kent proposes creating a new public-private partnership to identify a list of critical open source projects to help prioritize and allocate resources to ensure their security.

In the long term though, new ways of identifying open source software and components that may pose a system risk need to be implemented so that the level of security required can be anticipated and the appropriate resources can be provided.

At the same time, security, maintenance and testing baselines need to be established across both the public and private sector. This will help ensure that national infrastructure and other important systems can continue to rely on open source projects. These standards also should be developed through a collaborative process according to Kent with an “emphasis on frequent updates, continuous testing and verified integrity”. Fortunately, the software community has already started this work with organizations like OpenSFF working across industry to create these standards.

Now that Google has weighed in on the issue of open source security, expect other tech giants like Microsoft and Apple to propose their own ideas regarding the matter.

We've also rounded up the best open source software and the best business laptops

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Apple iMessage vs Google RCS is complicated… but what about older phones?
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Since iOS 5 back in 2011, Apple introduced a new message standard called iMessage. If you use an iOS or Mac device, you’ll most likely have used the feature through the Messages app.

These show as a blue bubble that allows you to send reactions, emojis, GIFs, and more.

However, a relatively new standard in messaging has started to appear in recent years called RCS (Rich Communication Services), which is trying to replace the SMS standard that iMessage uses.

RCS is designed to bring the same functionality that iMessage, WhatsApp and other messaging apps offer in a form that works across multiple types of device.

Google's Head of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer, has accused Apple of bullying by forcing users to use iMessage instead of RCS. But Lockheimer, and others, are forgetting those who don’t use smartphones, and that’s a problem.

The pros and cons of RCS

If you use an Android phone through the messages app, and you live in the United States, you will be able to reply with reactions, emojis through an encrypted connection. That's something that SMS doesn’t provide.

Since RCS made its introduction in 2008, the Open Mobile Alliance has been leading the way in trying to replace the SMS standard with this. It makes it easier for users to share content without being charged for it, such as how MMS, or picture messaging still does to this day.

However, the standard is limited. Many carriers in the United States haven’t agreed to implement RCS, leaving it spotty across cellular networks at best. While some other countries, such as the United Kingdom, currently have no carriers supporting RCS.

Combine this with the fact that Universal Profile, which is the latest attempt for carriers to implement the same RCS standard across the phones that each provides, has been delayed. It’s essentially pot luck in whether your phone and carrier will feature RCS.

But there’s yet another handicap to this. Google is decided to activate RCS within its own Messages app, which means that regardless of the carrier you’re on, you’ll be able to use the service. 

This applies to UK users, but others would rather send messages through WhatsApp and other apps.

Google’s Head of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer tried to rectify his comments over the weekend, alongside linking to a TikTok video of Maxwell Weinbach giving his reasons for why he thought it was bad that Apple hadn’t implemented RCS.

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But while they both provide compelling arguments on one side, there’s another aspect that Google and Weinbach have both left out. This could also be why Apple has yet to implement RCS.

Forgetting the casual user

The majority of us have family members who simply refuse to upgrade to a smartphone. Or at least, refuse to upgrade to a newer smartphone that was released after 2011.

It’s a comfort blanket to some where they’re familiar with the design and the features that the old phone brings. They’re comfortable in using SMS messaging, the camera app and Facebook, and nothing else.

RCS doesn’t factor into this. While Google’s Messages app requires Android 5.0 and above, it’s pot luck whether older phones will support RCS within the app. And that’s if your friend or family member is using Google’s Messages app on their phone.

While the feature is clearly beneficial to those who message frequently, influencers and heads of these departments seem to be missing the bigger picture on who RCS benefits and whether there should be more efforts to make RCS standardized, rather than from one app or waiting for some carriers to come on board.

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The success of web browser Brave is a bad sign for Google – here’s why
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Privacy-centric web browser Brave has surpassed 50 million active monthly users for the first time, the company has announced.

In a blog post, Brave says the milestone represents the fifth time the browser’s user base has doubled in as many years. The service also currently attracts more than 15 million daily active users, another high water mark.

Brave credits a range of new features and products for the continued growth, including an in-built crypto wallet and private search engine. But the company also acknowledged it has benefited from wider consumer trends.

“Users all over the world are looking for a private, safe and faster browsing experience, along with tools that give them independence from Big Tech. This long term and sustainable growth reflects that user desire,” said Brave.

A paradigm shift?

The uptake of privacy-centric browsers, VPNs, proxies, encrypted email and other privacy tools in recent years hints at a shift in attitudes that could have major ramifications for the largest technology companies in the world, whose businesses are predicated on the collection of vast amounts of data.

Since the Snowden leaks and Cambridge Analytica scandal in particular, public awareness of the importance of data privacy has risen steeply. Generally, consumers are more wary about the information they share with Big Tech companies, and more savvy about how their information is used and monetized in the data economy.

We suspect this trend may begin to register more clearly in the web browser market soon. Currently, Google Chrome dominates the space with a 63.8% market share, followed by Apple’s Safari (19.6%) and Microsoft Edge (4%). However, privacy-centric services operated by smaller players are beginning to gather steam.

Although Brave’s 50 million-strong user base represents just 1% of the market, based on data on the total number of web users from Statista, its rate of growth will give the likes of Google pause for thought. And that’s despite the inherent inconveniences; this writer can attest that Brave frequently breaks website functionality as a result of its no-tolerance policy on cookies.

Although Google has made a show of improving its privacy practices and planning for the demise of third-party cookies, proposed alternatives like FLoC have been panned by privacy advocates, who say the solutions create as many problems as they solve.

There is also plenty of evidence Big Tech companies still cannot be trusted to protect the interests of users. This week, for example, both Google and Facebook were slapped with significant fines for cookie-related breaches of EU privacy laws. The patience of consumers is surely wearing thin.

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Browser wars: Apple’s M1 chips help Safari close the gap on Google Chrome
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The success of Apple’s M1 range of silicon could have inadvertently helped drive up the market share of web browser Safari, new data suggests.

The first M1-powered MacBooks were launched in 2020, followed by a series of mobile workstations powered by the M1 Max and M1 Ultra in October, 2021. Both launches were met with critical acclaim.

All Apple devices, of course, come with Safari pre-installed. And according to the latest figures from Statcounter, the company’s browser now accounts for 19.6% of internet activity, up 1.2% in the last three months alone.

While the increase may sound relatively insignificant as a percentage, the raw numbers are much more compelling; data on the total number of web users from Statista suggests Safari has attracted roughly 58 million additional users since the start of October.

A big year for Safari?

The ubiquity of Apple products (iPhones and iPads, as well as Mac devices) means Safari is comfortably the world’s second largest browser, streets ahead of the likes of Microsoft Edge and Firefox.

However, Safari is still nowhere near as widely used as Google Chrome (with 64% market share), which currently has somewhat of a stranglehold on the sector.

That said, the ever-growing popularity of Apple devices and the company’s reputation for high levels of security and data privacy could see Safari begin to close the gap on Chrome this year.

Apple has also been transparent about its efforts to accelerate the adoption of business Macs, which may have a knock-on effect on the size of the Safari user base. Last month, Apple announced it is preparing a device subscription offering whereby businesses will be able to lease MacBooks for as little as $ 30/month.

Although Google executives won’t lose any sleep over the threat posed by Safari just yet, the browser wars appear set to rage on in 2022.

  • Protect your online privacy with the best VPN services around

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Exclusive: Has Google won the cloud storage wars?
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As we all take a much-needed break over the Christmas period, we can start to reflect on what a year this has been – and how we can hope next year is better. One company that hasn't had a bad 2021 is Google and, specifically, Drive. 

An exclusive TechRadar Pro poll carried out by OnePulse shows that Google Drive is by far and away the most popular cloud storage provider going, used by around 44.1% of respondents. 

While this might not come as a surprise, there is a lot of competition in the cloud storage market at the moment. Apple, for example, has been expanding the scope of iCloud this year, introducing a bunch of privacy-focused features. Dropbox and OneDrive, too, are long-time competitors biting at Drive's heels. 

One provider to rule them all 

But the extent of the domination is impressive and worth pondering for a while, driven at least initially by Google's willingness to give away generous services for free, alongside the overall ecosystem lock-in for its services and Android.

According to OnePulse, around 44% of respondents use Google Drive's free or paid services, followed by iCloud (31.2% across free and paid), OneDrive (11.2% across free and paid), Dropbox (6.8% across free and paid), and then everyone else makes up the remaining 6.8%. 

So not that surprising overall but you can clearly see the influence of Apple's iPhone and Mac customer base electing to use the tightly integrated iCloud services. 

Digging deeper, the poll found most people (48.7%) have been using their service for between one and five years, with the rest either under a year (16.3%) or over five years (35%). 

In terms of storage, around 55.4% use between 1GB and 100GB, 30.8% have no idea how much storage is left, and 13.8% use between 101GB and 1TB or more. 

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Google Fit on iPhones can now measure heart and respiratory rates
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Google has now rolled out a feature on iPhones that will allow the Google Fit app to use the phone’s camera to measure heart rate and even respiratory rates. Introduced quietly over the last weekend, this feature required users to place their finger over the rear camera lens and apply some pressure to measure the vitals.

To recall this feature was first introduced to the Android side of the smartphone world earlier this year and doesn’t need internet access in order to measure the vitals of a user.

According to 9To5Google, Google says that it tracks the subtle changes in the colour of the finger along with the algorithms that account for skin tone, lighting, age, and others to calculate the blood flow.

Google Fit health trackers

(Image credit: Google)

Google warns that the measurements are not intended for medicinal purposes, however, since these hardly take 30 seconds to calculate the beats per minute, it can be helpful in checking anomalies while on the go.

Additionally, the front camera on the phone can be used to track the breaths users take every minute. It requires the phone to be kept on a flat and stable surface in a way that the camera has a clear view of the upper half of the body. Google Fit then guides the user through the process to calculate the respiratory rate and the entire process takes just over 30 seconds to complete.

The feature can be accessed by visiting “Browse” Tab in the Google Fit app and then selecting “Vitals.” Once measured, the users can decide if the reports need to be saved in the Google Fit app or not. The feature is available for iPhone 7 and iPad Pro users as well.

Google says that “these results are not intended for medical purposes and should not be used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease or medical condition”. Though it does add that these capabilities have been through proper clinical studies.

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Chrome 100 could break your website – but Google is on it
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After launching back in 2008, Chrome will reach version 100 early next year but unfortunately this milestone will cause some websites to no longer work in Google's browser.

Although there are no major changes or revolutionary new features planned for Chrome 100, the search giant has been aware for some time that this major release will likely lead to problems for older websites. While Chrome 100 will release in March of next year, Google already began warning users and site owners about potential issues in a blog post published in November, saying:

“In the first half of 2022, Chrome will reach a three-digit major version number: 100! When browsers first reached version 10 many eons ago, lots of issues were discovered with User-Agent parsing libraries as the major version number went from one digit to two. Now that we are approaching version 100 in both Chrome and Firefox, with Edge not far behind, we want to detect possible issues related to three-digit version number early, so we are ready when it becomes a reality.”

When Chrome's major version number goes from two digits to three, websites developed with the web design kit Duda will no longer display correctly. Thankfully though, Google has a plan to avoid disrupting the web and the company has already begun contacting individual developers to warn them about the upcoming change.

User Agent string

In order for a website to know what browser and what version of it you're currently using, the site will check the User Agent string which is essentially a line of text that your browser attaches to every web connection it makes.

Here is an example of a User Agent string: “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/96.0.4664.110 Safari/537.36”. At the end, you can see “Chrome/96.0.4664.110” which means we're running Chrome version 96. 

The problem with Duda resides in the fact that its developers chose to only read the first two digits so “Chrome/96” would be 96 while “Chrome/100” would be seen as 10 or version 10 to be more precise. To make matters worse, Duda automatically blocks any version of Chrome below version 40. For this reason, Chrome 100 will seen as Chrome 10 and will be automatically blocked by the web design kit, rendering websites built using it unreadable.

While Google has considered forcing the major version number to the minor version position and staying at 99 so “Chrome/100” would instead be “Chrome/99.100”, this is only a backup plan. Instead, the search giant has begun contacting individual developers to let them know about this issue before Chrome 100 is released. Google has also added a new flag to Chrome (#force-major-version-to-100) which developers can use to see whether or not their sites will be affected.

Although moving to version 100 has the potential to disrupt a lot of older sites, Google and Mozilla are working hard to address the issue before the rollouts of version 100 of both Chrome and Firefox next year .

We've also highlighted the best browser, best website builder and best web hosting 

Via 9To5Google

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Eagle-eyed Redditor spots a flying Stealth Bomber on Google Maps
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Google Maps is home to a lot of unusual sights, from strange pentagrams in Kazakhstan to a parked UFO in Romania. But a Reddit user has just spotted one of the rarest ones yet: a flying stealth bomber.

Although the B-2 Spirit can fly at 1,010 km/h (or about 628mph), an image of the bomber was nonetheless captured on Google Maps as it hurtled across a remote part of Missouri. The image was found by Redditor Hippowned.

Naturally, the image is slightly blurry and also has some red, green and blue artifacts, which are the result of how satellites capture images. Google Maps, and its software-based companion Google Earth, gather their images from a variety of sources, but this frame is credited to satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies.

A Stealth Bomber caught in Google Maps

(Image credit: u/Hippowned / Reddit)

Rather than focusing light onto a sensor like traditional cameras, satellites measure the intensity of certain wavelengths of light (like red, green and blue), which are then combined to make a single image. 

It's this process that's likely behind the colorful banding seen in Google Maps' shot of the stealth bomber, with the simultaneous motion of both the satellite and aircraft causing the psychedelic separation between the red, green and blue parts of the image.   

This isn't the first time a stealth bomber has been spotted on Google Maps; a craft was previously seen parked on the runway at Whiteman Air Force Base, the current home of the B-2 Spirit. But it is the first time one has been captured in flight, albeit in a location that's only 25 miles north of that AFB, which goes some way to explaining why it's seemingly hurtling towards St. Louis.

Flying colors

A plane caught flying on Google Maps

(Image credit: Google Maps)

Google Maps has been going for over 15 years, but much of its imagery is updated every few years, which explains why new, unusual sightings frequently pop up on the service.

That said, it's relatively unusual to see fast-moving objects like planes – and stealth bombers in particular – in its patchwork of satellite images. In 2017, Redditors discovered an airliner in mid-flight over the South Downs National Park in the UK, with that photo also displaying the same red, green and blue artifacts as the B-2 Spirit shot, but it's still pretty rare.

Google's method of compiling its satellite shots has also created some slightly spooky, aircraft-based anomalies. In 2019, a Google Earth user in the UK spotted what appeared to be the shadow of an aircraft under the sea, just off the coast of Edinburgh, Scotland.

But a Google spokesperson told The Mirror that “the reason it looks like the plane is underwater is because each satellite image you see on the map is actually a compilation of several images.”

The spokesperson added that “fast-moving objects, like planes, often show up in only one of the many images we use for a given area. When this happens, faint remnants of the fast-moving object can sometimes be seen.” Or in the case of the stealth bomber, a surprisingly clear shot of the one of the most recognizable aircraft ever made.

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