Life of a Google Query

The “perfect search engine,” defined by co-founder Larry Page as something that, “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” To that end, we have persistently pursued innovation and refused to accept the limitations of existing models. As a result, we developed our serving infrastructure and breakthrough PageRank™ technology that changed the way searches are conducted.

From the beginning, our developers recognized that providing the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers that often slowed under peak loads, ours employed linked PCs to quickly find each query’s answer. The innovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It’s an idea that others have since copied, while we have continued to refine our back-end technology to make it even more efficient.

The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we’re able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

• PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

  PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.

• Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.

Google innovations don’t stop at the desktop. To give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, we continue to develop new mobile applications and services that are more accessible and customizable. And we’re partnering with industry-leading carriers and device manufacturers to deliver these innovative services globally. We’re working with many of these industry leaders through the Open Handset Alliance to develop Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform, which will offer people a less expensive and better mobile experience.

The life span of a Google query normally lasts less than half a second, yet involves a number of different steps that must be completed before results can be delivered to a person seeking information.

3.The search results are returned to the user in a fraction of a second.			1. The web server sends the query to the index servers. The content inside the index servers is similar to the index in the back of a book – it tells which pages contain the words that match the query.

	2. The query travels to the doc servers, which actually retrieve the stored documents. Snippets are generated to describe each search result.

Secure File Permissions Matter

Summary: A web host had a crappy server configuration that allowed people on the same box to read each other’s configuration files, and some members of the “security” press have tried to turn this into a “WordPress vulnerability” story.

WordPress, like all other web applications, must store database connection info in clear text. Encrypting credentials doesn’t matter because the keys have to be stored where the web server can read them in order to decrypt the data. If a malicious user has access to the file system — like they appeared to have in this case — it is trivial to obtain the keys and decrypt the information. When you leave the keys to the door in the lock, does it help to lock the door?

A properly configured web server will not allow users to access the files of another user, regardless of file permissions. The web server is the responsibility of the hosting provider. The methods for doing this (suexec, et al) have been around for 5+ years.

I’m not even going to link any of the articles because they have so many inaccuracies you become stupider by reading them.

If you’re a web host and you turn a bad file permissions story into a WordPress story, you’re doing something wrong.

Facebook shut its Lite site after just seven months

Facebook has shut down its Lite site aimed at users with slow or poor internet connections.

The stripped down version of the original ran for around seven months.

Facebook posted a note on its own fan page thanking those who used Lite, adding that it had “learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site”.

“I think a lot of the Facebook experience was left out of Lite, especially the monetisable parts,” said Ray Valdes of Gartner Research.

“The other part of this decision is probably because they have improved the performance sufficiently with the main part of Facebook and made things run better that they didn’t need this back-up approach to cover a situation of low performance,” Mr Valdes told BBC News.

The technology blog ReadWriteWeb.com had described the Lite site as a “Twitter-like experience” of the popular microblogging service because it offered a smaller number of features than the fully-fledged site.

The options on Facebook Lite were limited to letting users write on their wall, post photos and videos, view events and browse other people’s profiles. There were no applications or special boxes.

“In some ways the Lite version was like using ad block on their own site – it stripped the site down to the very basics,” said Mike Melanson of ReadWriteWeb.

The change was announced on Facebook’s own profile page and offered few details as to why the service has been closed down.

“It would seem not enough people were using it but then there was not a lot of awareness about the product. Tears will not be shed over the loss of Facebook Lite,” Nick O’Neil of AllFacebook.com told BBC News.

A number of commentators on the social media blog Mashable.com said that they used it because it was not blocked at their office while some said they thought it “would have been a nice support for low bandwidth nations”.

Google Discloses Requests on Users

Google Inc. moved to highlight the issue of government censorship and demands for information about Web users, just as the Internet company came under fire from a group of government officials over the way it handles user privacy.

The Silicon Valley giant Tuesday disclosed for the first time the number of requests it has received from government agencies for data about its users. Google also disclosed how many government requests it gets to remove content from its search engine, YouTube video site, Blogger blogging software and other services.

Google is also showing how often it complies with government demands to remove Web content and said it later plans to include how often it turns over data on users. Google’s disclosure tool, an online country map, excluded data for China where Google says numerating the requests would be illegal.

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said the company decided that “greater transparency” about its activities could lead to less censorship. “We hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe,” he wrote in a blog post.

Google’s move comes as its critics continue to accuse the company and its peers of being reckless with user data. On Tuesday, a group of privacy commissioners from countries including Canada, France and the United Kingdom held a press conference to push Google to build better privacy protections into its services. On Monday, the group sent a letter scolding Google over privacy.

A Google spokesman said the company “released the tool now because we thought it would be useful in conversations about this trend.”

Google is pushing a broad campaign to try to curb censorship, an issue that contributed to a recent decision to shut down its censored search service in China. While Google faces heightened criticism for not doing enough to explain how it uses the information it collects, the company is trying to draw attention to other entities that seek user data.

Privacy advocates—who have long hounded Internet companies to be more open about how they use what they collect—praised the move. “It puts some numbers behind all the stories we have,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights non-proft organization.

Others cautioned the raw numbers are hard to interpret, in part because there is little to compare them with. But they said that showing how countries stack up is a first step.

Google says government requests for user data go through Google’s legal team, which examines each to see if it is valid based on the law, narrows the request if possible and complies only when it must legally do so. Some requests are backed by court order; others aren’t.

The company says it tries to notify users when information about their accounts has been requested. A Google spokesman said it is sometimes asked for account and log-in information.

The company’s new disclosure tool shows that Brazil made the most requests for user data during the last six months of 2009, with 3,663. The U.S. was second with 3,580. Brazil also led with 291 requests for removal of content, with Germany in second place and the U.S. fourth, behind India.

Brazil’s Ministério Público Federal, its federal prosecution service, said in a statement late Tuesday that it “acts based on reports of crime or complaints received directly from users” or forwarded by a nonprofit dedicated to child safety, according to a translation of the statement.

“The information released today by Google demonstrates the care with which all levels of law enforcement agencies treat electronically protected data,” said a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. She said the number of requests in the U.S. “reflects a targeted approach by law enforcement agencies to effectively root out” crimes by criminals such as identity thieves and child predators.

The Mountain View, Calif., company stressed limitations to the data, which don’t include countries where it receives a small amount of requests or statistics that could jeopardize important investigations. In the case of YouTube, the company said the data doesn’t include requests by government agencies for removal of copyrighted content.

In their Monday letter to Google, the privacy commissioners scolded the company for what they describe as a range of privacy abuses, ranging from inadequate protections in its social-networking service Buzz to its procedures for retaining images it gathers for its Street View mapping services. It calls on Google to create “privacy-protective” default settings and make it easy for people to delete their accounts, among other measures.

“We are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world’s citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications,” reads the letter, which also asks for Google to issue it a response for how it plans to meet these requirements. “Privacy cannot be sidelined in the rush to introduce new technologies to online audiences around the world,” it states.

A Google spokesman said in its response to the letter Monday that the company has “discussed all these issues publicly many times before” and had nothing to add.

European authorities have been among the Internet giant’s harshest critics when it comes to privacy issues, pressuring the company to shorten the time it retains search logs, for example.

European governments blasted a settlement between Google, authors and publishers over digital books in part over concerns with what Google would do with users’ reading records.

Criticism is the U.S has been building too. A group of lawmakers recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s roll-out of its Buzz service, which they contend exposed private information about Google users. Monday’s letter also dwells on Buzz, claiming its launch “betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws.” Days after launching Buzz, Google acknowledged it should have made some user privacy controls more prominent and adjusted the service.

Google search your way in city

All you need to know is where you are and which place you want to reach and Google maps will find the way for you. Not just this. The search engine will also tell you the place from where you can catch a public transport, the distance to be travelled, time required and expenditure for the trip. Already available in Delhi, such a facility may soon come to Chandigarh.

On Thursday, Jagjeet Chawla, product manager, Google India, said, “It will be easier to do it for Chandigarh as it is a well-planned city. Google maps have covered most places in India and road directions are already available to guide vehicles. For enabling maps to tell about public transport, we need schedules and routes from the government.”

Google is learned to have requested the central government to provide data of various public transport systems that can be mapped, like Delhi, where, for instance, if you wish to take the tube from Rajouri Garden to Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station Gate No 2, you must just enter your location and destination on Google map. In a few seconds, the engine will tell you that your journey will take 45 minutes, location of Metro station, frequency of tube on the route and nearby taxi stand.

Google to stop censoring China search results

Violation of the commitment it had made, says Beijing

Washington DC/Beijing: Google Inc. on Monday evening announced that it would stop censoring the results of its search engine in China. The move follows Google’s allegations of cyber-attacks by China in January — which the Chinese government denied — and subsequent testimonies on the matter by Google, to the United States Congress.

Since Google stopped censoring its results, users visiting Google.cn were being redirected to Google.com.hk, the company said, where uncensored search in simplified Chinese was on offer. “This website was specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong,” said Google.

A search for “Tiananmen Square protests of 1989” on Google.com.hk returned extensive search results for Internet users on China. However, the users were unable to open many of these websites and according to reports searches in Chinese returned no results but only the message, “The connection was reset.”

In a statement Google said evidence it uncovered during its investigation into cyber attacks suggested Google E-mail accounts of “dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties.”

The announcement said Google was unwilling to tolerate these attacks and attempts to further limit free speech on the web in China — including the blocking of social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Blogger — and that it would therefore not continue censoring results on Google.cn.

Chinese officials attacked the Internet giant for violating the commitment it had made, when it first launched Google.cn in 2006. “Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks,” said an unnamed official at the Internet governing authority at the State Council Information Office told State-run Xinhua news agency. However, Google’s decision was welcomed by bloggers and rights activists in China, who said the move would help bring more awareness to Chinese Internet users about the government’s censorship policies.

“Chinese people want a free Internet, but many are not even aware of what information is being restricted by the government. The fact that they will now be exposed to more information, even if they cannot accessit, is a big change in of itself,” well-known Chinese blogger Michael Anti told The Hindu.

In the statement, Google confirmed that it would continue research and development work in China and maintain its sales presence.