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We’re still quite a way from the point where regulators conclude that Google is too big for its britches, but just for fun, I typed the question, “Is Google a monopoly?” into my search engine. (Wanna guess which search engine I use?) My query brought back 461,000 responses. Clearly, people have debated this question for quite some time, even as the company continues to grow ever larger.

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Kent Walker, VP and General Counsel

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But Google obviously doesn’t agree that size and market dominance pose even remote antitrust parallels with IBM in the 1960s or Microsoft in the 1990s. The chief reason: the markets in question are very different. Earlier Friday, Google’s general counsel, Kent Walker, and Dana Wagner, the U.S. competition counsel, got on the phone to explain why.

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Since antitrust decisions get decided in Washington, it’s not surprising, then, to learn that lobbyists for Google and its rivals are shadowing each other in the corridors of power. Google’s Walker suggests that most of the noise around competition issues is being generated by competitors like Microsoft–but also the cable and phone companies who don’t like Google’s position regarding Net neutrality.

“The nature of the Internet is just a fundamentally different world from the sale of packaged software or the bundling of software with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers),” said Walker, “The standard line we have is that competition is just one click away,”

Google does acknowledge its role as a “disruptive company,” but Walker suggests that the real battle is between desktop-based computing, including operating systems and productivity applications, and cloud-based computing. To the degree the latter trend emerges, he said, that spells trouble for Microsoft. “In a sense that’s the real market, if you will,” he said. “It’s how do people use technology to do what they need to do. That can be search to find things more broadly on the Internet. But more broadly, it’s to use the Internet, to use the network to share information to create new goods, tools and services.”

But will advertisers see their rates go up as a result of the Yahoo-Google search deal? There have been reports suggesting as much. And of course, one of the filters regulators use for antitrust review is to what extent it hurts customers, or, in this case, advertisers. Not surprisingly, Wagner argues that advertisers’ costs will head in the opposite direction.

I agreed with much of his argument. The parallels with Microsoft are off. In Microsoft’s case, the company got into trouble because it used its desktop monopoly to force companies to adopt Internet Explorer. Still, is there not a point –call it 70 percent market share or 90 percent market share, or somewhere in between–where Google opens itself to the title of monopolist, even if it got there by virtue of building a better mousetrap? Wagner took a crack at that question, countering that the magic number fascination “was a little bit of a red herring.”

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Barring some unlikely bolt of inspiration at Microsoft, Google should continue to pad its already formidable lead in search advertising. And now that Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the company intends to turn its attention to display ads, who of sane mind would bet against its chances?

Walker offered what he called both a “structural” answer as well as the “behavioral” answer.

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(Credit:
Google)

Shown is one of many fake antivirus products seen by Panda Security recently.

In addition to seeing increasing amounts of adware, Panda Security reported that Trojan horses account for almost 60 percent of all malware samples analyzed between July and September. Worms and spyware, once the bane of every computer user, were nominal during the period at only 4.53 percent and 2.93 percent respectively.

(Credit:
Panda Security)

The fake scanners typically report a computer infection and suggest downloading an application to remove the malware. Once downloaded, the scanners then ask computer users to purchase the application before it can remove an infection that never really exists. The goal of these attacks is financial gain.

On Thursday, Panda Security released its report for the third quarter stating that adware is responsible for one third of all new malicious software. In particular, the security company cited increased use of fake antivirus scanners.

The company stresses that the Mino is not intended to replace the Ultra–it’s a “social accessory for the YouTube/MySpace/Facebook generation to communicate and express themselves.” A PR rep quotes market research saying this magic demographic wants it “thinner to fit in their pocket and that they would prefer rechargeable batteries (like an
iPod) and a sleeker/cooler design.”

Most of the Mino is about redesign. The USB connector now flips straight up, rather than to the side, for an overall more compact footprint that should fit better in a crowded USB environment. Though it has a slightly smaller LCD display–1.4 inches compared with 1.5 inches–the back navigation controls look a mite more sophisticated than before. Pure Digital has also punted the replaceable battery in favor of a nonremovable lithium ion model. The company claims you can shoot for four hours on a charge.

Like the 60-minute version of the Ultra, the Mino comes equipped with 2GB of memory, capable of storing 60 minutes of its VGA-resolution video. The company has moved up to a later generation image-processing architecture. So in theory the Mino should provide a bit better image quality, and the company says that the camcorder includes an updated–more sensitive–microphone with improved signal processing. And, of course, it comes with in-camera software that provides the plug-in-and-upload simplicity which endears these camcorders to sharers on sites like YouTube and MySpace; the latter is a new partner for the company. In addition, the Mino now supports direct operation on a
Mac, without requiring software installation. It also provides a TV-out connector for larger-scale enjoyment.

On Sale Now: $149.99
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The Mino is slated to ship via selected online and brick-and-mortar retailers, including Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and directly from the company’s TheFlip.com, and will go into wider distribution this fall. It costs $179.99.

(Credit:
Pure Digital)

Maybe I’m too old to understand why everyone wouldn’t want a smaller, sleeker, and more functional–albeit slightly more expensive–version of the same product, regardless of their need to accessorize their social life.

(Credit:
Flip Video)

Although it was recently outed by B&H, Wednesday marks the official unveiling of Pure Digital’s Flip Video Mino, the latest camcorder from one of the leaders of the low-res, straight-to-Web capture pack. Thinner and smaller than its popular sibling, the Flip Video Ultra, the Mino crams similar technology into a more compact, more attractive package that can fit into a pants pocket.

USB connector (left) and back (right)

Pure Digital also announced a make-your-own-DVD service; you upload up to an hour’s worth of video, and they burn a DVD and distribute it to your family and friends. That will run you $19.99 a pop. The company also claims you can “keep your videos archived forever,” but remember that “forever” doesn’t mean the same thing to companies as it does to people. Can you say MSN Music?

Flip Video Mino

Fuze is priced at $29.95 a month (much less with yearly commitment). That’s a bit high, and I expect competition (and the growing popularity of free products) will steadily push the prices down on remote presentation apps. I’m glad about that. I can’t stand WebEx.

Fuze is a Flash app, and reminds me a bit of Adobe’s own Acrobat Connect, with which it competes (it’s a very good product, too). There are several other products in the space, too, including Vyew, which was recently updated, and the open-source DimDim.

Bonus: What’s CallWave doing in this market?
Prior to releasing this product, CallWave made and sold an “Internet answering machine,” that did speech-to-text summaries of your voicemail. The company is backing away from that product. CallWave CEO Jeffrey Cavins told me that while there was good uptake from techies, the service was too hard to configure for general consumers. If cellular carriers had gotten onboard to offer it to their subscribers, the product would still be supported. But they didn’t.

Fuze also runs on some smartphones, like the Blackberry Bold, and includes support for video. I haven’t had a chance to check that out but it’s an important feature–you’ll be able to participate in a Web meeting while you’re sitting an airport waiting area with your laptop put away. On other phones, like the
iPhone, you can monitor the chat room but not see the shared screens.

There’s a new WebEx competitor hitting the market: CallWave’s Fuze. Its advantages: No download required on either the viewing or the presenting side. It works with video and allows markup of video frames. And it has some nice call-handling features.

I used the tool briefly and although I found some bugs and performance issues in this early version, I like the design and found it simple to use. You can upload documents to share (images, text files, PowerPoint presentations, even videos), and once you’re sharing them, use simple drawing tools to mark them up and illustrate points. On the shared video player, you can sketch over the top of a paused video, and the sketches stay attached to the particular frame; you can see which frames have markups by little icons on the player’s progress bar.

I like the feature in the program to call people into a conference bridge, instead of the usual procedure, which is to e-mail them a phone number and access code. It will save a lot of time in online meetings if you can pull in your participants.

On the downside, you can’t (yet) use Fuze for screen or application sharing, since that would require a software install on the sender’s side. The company is working on that, although the people I talked to there want to push the “no download required” pitch as long as they can, which explains the delay.

Image sharing and markup, no download required.

When the president proposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, supporters of the idea predicted that among other things, it would spur a vigorous drive to rebuild the nation’s cybersecurity. Yes, it would be part of a huge bureaucracy, but just think of the outcome by combining such a reservoir of talents and resources under one roof. The skeptics were less sure, warning this project had all the makings of a bureaucratic clustermuck.

(Credit:
Charles Cooper/CNET News)

Under the authorship of one Robert D. Jamison, described as Under Secretary National Protection & Programs, DHS has rejected the calls as ill-considered.

To be fair to Chertoff, he does have a few big action items on his agenda, such as securing the physical safety of Americans against terror attacks. But cybersecurity has been left on the departmental back burner for so long that only a major attack would be enough to push it front and center.

All I can say is that if you had entrusted the Normandy invasion to this crowd, they’d be speaking German in France today.

But the evidence from the U.S. Government Accountability Office and other watchdog groups is beyond contestation: The DHS remains far from fulfilling its charge to shore up the nation’s critical infrastructure. So how much longer will they need before making good on the promise? You have to wonder.

And so how has DHS responded to the challenge? By going the PR route.

“A reorganization of roles and responsibilities is the worst thing that could be done to improve our nation’s security posture against very real and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats,” he wrote in a blog posting. Jamison finished with a flourish that must have warmed the cockles of his boss’ heart with a firm declaration of resolve.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to tear out what’s left of my hair. Jamison may be a well-intentioned bureaucrat who wants to see this through to completion. But the fact is that DHS is taking forever to get the job done. When he swung through San Francisco a few months ago, DHS director Michael Chertoff offered all the right sounding phrases about cybersecurity, nothing more.

What really drives me crazy about our government–and it applies to Republicans and Democrats alike–is the blithe insouciance of empowered apparatchiks who run their respective fiefdoms as if they have all the time in the world to get things done.

Members of the bipartisan Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency earlier this month criticized the agency as being unprepared to combat a increasing range of cyberattacks. The best solution, they argued, was to move responsibility for the nation’s cybersecurity elsewhere.

“We have a plan and are on a path that will address these serious national cyber vulnerabilities. We must stay the course.”

Now we know which side was right.

DHS boss Michael Chertoff

LiveCycle is one of the primary products in Adobe’s enterprise business. The product is designed for applications that involve document exchanges inside and outside of organizations, such as government Web sites that require people to fill out and process claims. It uses Adobe’s PDF and Flex software to create paperless, Web-based applications.

The company on Tuesday is expected to announce LiveCycle Enterprise Suite Update 1, which adds new content management features along with tools to more quickly build financial services and government applications.

The PDF Generator 3D ES component is targeted at the manufacturing industry and allows companies to share two- and three-dimensional models in PDF format. The component works with more than 40 CAD applications, according to Adobe.

LiveCycle ES Update 1 will be available next month, Adobe said.

Adobe Systems is updating and expanding its LiveCycle software for building business-oriented Web applications.

The Content Services component, developed in conjunction with Alfresco Software, lets companies build a process or application linked to existing enterprise content. For instance, companies can use the tool to create a system for connecting manufacturers to parts suppliers, or for linking hospitals to insurers.

The new release also includes two new components: LiveCycle Content Services ES, and LiveCycle PDF Generator 3D ES.

The e-mail continued: “As stated on our home page, Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a ’social networking site.’ It is meant to help reinforce pre-existing social connections, not build large groups of new ones.”

In other words: Facebook considers a game that encourages friend-list manipulation as strategy to be perverting the idea of the “social graph,” a concept that CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds dear. Facebook doesn’t want to be rival MySpace, which not only encourages the formation of new connections but which birthed a legitimate C-list celebrity in Tila Tequila–who became famous for having more MySpace friends than any other member and wound up with a dating show on MTV.”

This revelation is not news, despite what a recent flurry of activity on Techmeme might have you think. Facebook has always banned “fake” profiles and has reportedly also taken action against “serial adders” (site members who simply try to fill huge friends lists, typically by adding attractive people) if other users report their accounts. Executives also are very careful not to call the site a “social network” when speaking publicly, as though it comes with negative connotations.

Several PackRat players say they have received account deletion notifications, and one was posted to the PackRat forum. “Please note that Facebook accounts are meant for authentic usage only,” the e-mail read. “This means that we expect accounts to reflect mainly ‘real-world’ contacts (i.e. your family, schoolmates, co-workers, etc.), rather than mainly ‘Internet-only’ contacts.”

A game on Facebook’s platform called “PackRat” has been causing some issues for the site, according to a thread in the game’s discussion forum.

The e-mail ended: “If this is in direct contrast to what you expected as legitimate Facebook usage, I apologize for any confusion. This is simply the intention behind the site.”

The aim of PackRat appears to involve amassing graphical “cards” to chalk up points–sort of like the original Pokemon game, some cards are easy and common while others are rare. One of the ways to get new cards is by “stealing” them from friends, so having a huge network of friends who are also playing the game gives PackRat players a big advantage. Reading on in the forum, it looks like one PackRat strategy involves “friending” and “defriending” people frequently so that players can allow and block access to one another’s cards. Others appear to have set up accounts strictly to play PackRat. This has apparently sent Facebook into damage control mode.

Facebook could’ve smelled a rat (pun completely intended) if an account had an unusual level of activity when it came to adding and removing friends, as well as little else going on besides the PackRat application. It’s also possible that individual PackRat members have set up multiple accounts for more effective gameplay.

But it’s an awkward move for Facebook to make, because there simply isn’t a way to prove that everyone with an account on the site is “real-life friends” with everyone on their friends lists. I’m pretty sure Robert Scoble hasn’t met all of the 5,000 people he famously has on his Facebook contacts roster, for example.

A number of incidents recently illustrated just how poorly trained most tech support people are.

Hard to say. On the one hand, when script-reading support persons tell you to do x and then y, they may be lying to you. That is, they may have no clue what x or y does or how it might solve the problem. If you know that x and y won’t fix the problem, is it OK to lie and say you did it?

I suspect that they have the jobs they do because they are willing to work cheap. Period. It seems that companies offer very little training to tech support personnel whose main job boils down to reading from a script and being polite.

Update May 23, 2008. Clarified that in the example, I was talking to the vendor of the VoIP unit, not the ISP.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

I recently had a problem with a standalone VoIP unit the first time I plugged it into a router other than my own. The unit plugs into the Internet on one end and a normal telephone on the other end. The Internet connection was fine, the lights on the router were all normal, but there was no VoIP dial tone. So I called the vendor of the VoIP box.

In this situation, is lying OK?

Apparently, they can’t handle a full problem description that requires understanding what’s going on. For example, neither person asked about the status lights on the front of the VoIP unit.

I stewed on the problem some more and narrowed it down a bit. Then I called back to provide my additional information about the problem and another support person said the same thing: turn everything off first. Neither support person had any interest in understanding the problem beyond the simple fact that there was no dial tone.

If you are dealing with a technical problem where you understand the concepts involved, you are likely to be frustrated talking to someone who does not understand the concepts, but is mandated to do step 1, then step 2, then step 3, and not let the facts get in the way.

Eventually, I figured out the VoIP problem myself (it had to do with DHCP vs. static IP address on the LAN) and fixed it without turning off the router.

The tech support person said to first turn off the router, the VoIP unit, and the cable modem and then turn
them back on again. This is a reasonable starting point, assuming you have no interest in gathering any additional information about the problem. In my case, I couldn’t turn everything off because the Internet connection was needed for something more important than this VoIP problem. That was the end of debugging. If I didn’t do step 1, they wouldn’t go to step 2 in the script. The fact that the Internet connection was fine, never made it to the radar screen.

Though this is exciting news indeed, GIPS VoiceEngine Mobile will only work with iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection and will not take advantage of the new iPhone’s 3G connection. This is because Apple has always blocked the use of VoIP on the carriers’ data connection; and AT&T, understandably, wouldn’t be too happy about supporting something that potentially costs them long distance phone business. We can only hope this will change in the future. For now, in my experience, AT&T’s 3G coverage is still too patchy and unreliable to be a platform for VoIP calls, anyway.

Soon enough, you will be able to voice chat using instant messenger on an iPhone.

(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

Being the inventors of the popular iLBC codec standard (which got approved by IETF in late 2004 and is currently implemented in the iPhone), GIPS’ decision today seems a natural move, considering the popularity of the iPhone. According to Apple, more than one million iPhone 3Gs were purchased over the launch weekend; and exactly one month later–today–you can still find people waiting in line outside some Apple stores for the device.

Global IP Solutions, a company well recognized for its media-processing expertise in IP communications, announced on Monday its SDK, which enables Voice over IP applications to be made for Apple’s
iPhone.

So far, GIPS claims that its voice engines have been downloaded and used more widely than any other voice engine worldwide. GIPS’ voice engines enable consumers and businesses to enjoy affordable, high-quality, IP-based communications, even under adverse network conditions.

This means that developers can now use GIPS’ VoiceEngine Mobile, to create real-time VoIP applications, such as games, social-networking applications, and, of course, applications for making calls to regular phone lines over the Internet. Soon enough, you will be able to use instant messenger to voice chat with friends on the iPhone, just like you’ve been doing on your computer for ages now.

Of much more interest to me, personally, is which companies are buying open-source software. I suspect that the United States would be tops in that survey.

In France, 24 percent of the enterprises surveyed by Forrester are currently using open-source software, with another 15 percent either piloting it or planning to start a pilot within the next year. (I’ll wager that the other 61 percent are using open source but simply don’t know it).

France may not have shown up for the Euro 2008 soccer finals, but it continues to demonstrate the most adoption of open-source software, according to a recent report from Forrester Research (”Open Source Adoption: Notes From The Field”).

The United States? It’s at 17 percent adoption, with another 11 percent in near-term pilots. Canada is tied with the States, while Germany, along with France, leads.

Even so, it’s useful information to see that a greater percentage of European companies recognize their adoption of open source, with fewer misplaced concerns: only 45 percent of European companies cited open-source security as a concern, while 71 percent of U.S. and Canadian companies view security as a problem for open source.

(Credit:
Forrester Research)

As noted in the comments to an earlier post, these low numbers suggest that Forrester is talking to the wrong people within enterprises. I’m confident in suggesting that at least 90 percent of these same companies that Forrester surveyed are actively using open source–but the CIO simply doesn’t know it.

International Adoption of Open Source

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