Android Market's Malware Scanner

Google doesn't like to manually review user-generated content. It's not efficient and algorithms can do a better job. Imagine how many people would need to be hired to watch all the videos submitted to YouTube (60 hours of videos uploaded every minute).

In some ways, uploading an application to the Android Market is just like uploading a video to YouTube. Sure, you need to pay a fee, but you don't have to wait until a Google employee checks the application. Unfortunately, this also means that the application can include malware, deceive users, crash or spam your contacts. Google usually reviewed the app only after enough users reported that the app is malicious.

Now there's a new service called Bouncer "which provides automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process. The service performs a set of analyses on new applications, applications already in Android Market, and developer accounts. Here's how it works: once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google's cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior".

That seems like a great idea: Google actually tests the apps without having to wait until other users install them and notice there's something wrong. The bad news is that this service was tested last year and was used to find potentially-malicious apps. Despite that, the apps infected by DroidDream were found by a security vendor and not by Google.

"The service has been looking for malicious apps in Market for a while now, and between the first and second halves of 2011, we saw a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise," says Google. Another explanation could be that Google's service is not good enough.

Google also says that Android "makes malware less potent" because it uses sandboxing, it displays the list of permissions and Android Market can remotely remove malware. I don't think that most of the users read the list of permissions. They simply ignore them, click "OK" and install the application. Maybe it would be a better idea to require users to explicitly enable sensitive permissions when they're using the apps.

While security vendors try to scare Android users and push their products, Google should focus on removing spam and malware from the Android Market and make it a safer place. Improving Android's security model and finding ways to install security updates faster are also important.

Google Docs Will Improve Paragraph Styles and Add More Fonts

An upcoming Google Docs update will bring a better interface for selecting paragraph styles and new features that lets you customize styles.



Google Docs will also add some new open source fonts from the Web Fonts project: Amaranth, Arvo, Dancing Script, Lobster, Merriweather, Open Sans, Philosopher, Quattrocento.


Google has recently updated the Android app for Google Docs and added offline support, while also improving the reading layout for tablets.

{ Thanks, J. }

Gmail's Shortcut for Inserting Hyperlinks

Less than 2% of the Gmail users have enabled keyboard shortcuts and actually use them, but that doesn't mean Google shouldn't improve them. Many people complained that Gmail's rich text editor doesn't have a shortcut for inserting hyperlinks and now it's available: Ctrl+K (or Cmd-K if you use a Mac).


The same shortcut is also used in Outlook, Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other apps. "Just select any text, and then press the Ctrl and K keys at the same time. A dialogue box opens where you can type a link," informs the Microsoft Word blog.

I wonder why Google doesn't offer the option to use the top search result for the text you've selected or at least pick one of the top results from the "edit link" box.

{ Thanks, Cougar. }

Country-Specific Blogger URLs

Google found an interesting trick to defend Blogger blogs against local laws: redirect readers to country-specific domains and only remove those URLs if required.

"Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you're reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or 'ccTLD.' For example, if you're in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader's current location," explains Google.

"Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country's law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD." That means [blogname].blogspot.com will continue to exist, but it's not clear if the users from that specific country will still be able to access it.

Blogger will start to use country-specific domains, just like many other Google services. If you're in Australia and visit google.com, you'll be redirected to google.com.au, but you can opt-out by clicking "Go to Google.com" or visiting google.com/ncr. The same option is available for Blogger: "Blog readers may request a specific country version of the blogspot content by entering a specially formatted NCR URL. NCR stands for 'No Country Redirect' and will always display [blogname].blogger.com in English, whether you're in India, Brazil, Honduras, Germany, or anywhere. For example: http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr – always goes to the U.S. English blog."

Google doesn't mention the list of countries that are affected by this change, but Techdows.com reports that India is one of them. Obviously, blog owners can use custom domains if they don't like the new feature. Even if Google made sure that the duplicate URLs are properly handled by search engines, it could be annoying to see so many URLs that send people to the same page.

{ Thanks, Venkat and Herin. }

Google+ and the Post-Web Google

I've noticed an increasing number of ads that no longer send people to the company's sites. Instead, the ads only include a link to the official Facebook page. Sites suddenly look outdated, no longer include the latest information and people stop visiting them.


There are still people that visit those outdated sites and many are coming from search engines like Google. Despite Google's efforts to have a comprehensive index, there's a growing subset of the Web it can't properly index and that's Facebook. Sure, Google indexes a lot of Facebook pages, but that's like trying to find your keys in a dark room. Google needs Facebook's map to index all the pages and find the connections between pages and between users, but Facebook is not willing to license this valuable data to the most important competitor. Google tried to make the web social and failed, so now the only option to stay relevant is to build an alternative to Facebook's walled garden and that's Google+.

+1s are the new links, authors have profiles, companies have social pages and this new universe will try to coexist with the old Web in Google's search results. Google tried to focus on the users and find ways to make the social Web more open, but now it has to focus on itself and do everything it can to stay alive and maybe even save the Web. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," but that's impossible if it can't access, understand and rank that information.

Back in 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin used links to determine the importance of a Web page. Now links and pages are no longer that important and the old rule of trying to send people to other sites as quickly as possible is difficult to apply. Showing personalized results requires understanding users better, encouraging them to share more content and create connections. In many ways, Google+ is the anti-Google and that's why it's difficult to understand some of the new features.

Google+ Now Open for Teens

Google+ changed the age requirements so that any Google Account user can join Google+. In most countries you need to be at least 13 years old to create a Google Account and join Google+, but there are 3 exceptions: Spain, South Korea and Netherlands. Until now, Google+ required to be at least 18 years old to "upgrade" your account.

Google's VP Bradley Horowitz mentioned that there are a few tweaks and new default settings for teens. By default, only the people from teens' circles can trigger notifications and comment on their public posts. If someone outside a teen's circles joins a hangout, Google+ temporarily removes the teen from the hangout and gives him a chance to rejoin.

Teens and young adults are the most active Internet users on the planet. And surprise, surprise: they're also human beings who enjoy spending time with friends and family. Put these two things together and it's clear that teens will increasingly connect online. Unfortunately, online sharing is still second-rate for this age group.

In life, for instance, teens can share the right things with just the right people (like classmates, parents or close ties). Over time, the nuance and richness of selective sharing even promotes authenticity and accountability. Sadly, today's most popular online tools are rigid and brittle by comparison, so teens end up over-sharing with all of their so-called "friends."

With Google+, we want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we're doing both, for everyone who's old enough for a Google Account.

It's interesting that the updated form for creating a Google Account doesn't automatically create a profile and doesn't add the user to Google+ if he's not at least 18 years old.

{ Thanks, Oskar. }

Two Ways to Export Your Google Docs

Google Takeout supports a new service: Google Docs. Now you can use the same interface to batch export your documents.


I tried both Google Takeout and the built-in feature from Google Docs that lets you download your documents. Even if they have the same purpose, they're quite different. The Google Docs feature is more flexible: you can choose to download only spreadsheets or presentations and skip all the other documents. You can also skip the files uploaded to Google Docs and not converted to a Google Docs format (for example: PDF files, archives and video files). Google Takeout has a "configure" feature, but you can't skip one or more document types. Another subtle difference is that Google Takeout lets you export only the files that you own, while Google Docs exports all the files from your account.


How to export all your files from Google Docs? Just go to the Google Docs homepage, select one or more documents, click "More" and then "Download", click the "All items" tab, pick your favorite formats and click "Download". The process is not that intuitive and you shouldn't have to select a file to see the download option.

{ via Data Liberation Blog }

The Self-Serving Google+ Results

Google has been often accused of promoting its own services in Google Search. Whether it was Google News, Image Search, Product Search or Video Search, the specialized search engine showed results from all over the web and not just from Google's own services. Image Search wasn't restricted to Picasa Web Albums, Video Search wasn't restricted to YouTube, Blog Search wasn't restricted to Blogger. Even for services like Google Dictionary and Google Finance that have their OneBox at the top of the Google search results, Google shows a list of other relevant services.

Google's special section that shows people and pages from Google+ doesn't look like a regular Google OneBox. It's placed in the right sidebar, where Google used to display ads. It shows up for general queries like [music], [sports], [math], that aren't typically associated with social search results. It only shows results from Google+, not from other social services like Twitter or Facebook. It's there even if you're not logged in using your Google account or you're not using Google+.

If Google+ wasn't a Google product, would it make sense to show a similar OneBox with profiles from social sites? Normally, Google would have created a profile search engine and showed a group of relevant results somewhere in the list of search results. Like this:


Google already indexes profiles from different sites and even shows special snippets with structured data. Why not create a special search engine for profiles like the one that lets you search recipes or the search engine for applications?

When Google released Knol, many people wondered if Google could boost the rankings for Knol articles or create a special OneBox with Knol results. "Google Knol does not receive any sort of boost or advantage in Google's rankings," replied Matt Cutts and he was right. Now what if Google displayed a Knol OneBox at the top of the search results for queries that returned relevant Knol articles? Maybe Knol would've become more popular and it wouldn't have been discontinued.

Is it fair to promote results from a single service, especially when you own that service? Even if those results are comprehensive, relevant and useful, it's always a good idea to also show results from other services.

Some engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace developed a site called Focus on the User that lets you replace the Google+ results with other social profiles from the web. From:


... to:



The results are better simply because you can check the accounts from other social services. Maybe an artist shares more information on Twitter or maybe the Facebook account is more important. "When you search for 'cooking' today, Google decides that renowned chef Jamie Oliver is a relevant social result. That makes sense. But rather than linking to Jamie's Twitter profile, which is updated daily, Google links to his Google+ profile, which was last updated nearly two months ago," noticed the authors of the Focus on the User site. I still don't think that the social search box should be placed next to the results, but at least the tweak made it more useful.

"Focus on the user and all else will follow. Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line." (Google's philosophy)

{ via waxy.org. Thanks, Michel. }

The Story Behind Gmail's Logo

If you've ever wondered who designed Gmail's logo, Kevin Fox has the answer:

Dennis Hwang designed the Gmail logo. At the time, Dennis designed virtually all of the Google doodles and he did a lot of the new logo work as well.

The logo was designed literally the night before the product launched. We were up very late and Sergey and I went down to his cube to watch him make it.

The initial version used the same font as the Google logo (Catull), but Catull has a very awkward 'a', so Dennis decided to use Catull for the 'G' to tie the brand to Google, then cast the others in a cleaner sans-serif (Myriad Pro, if I recall correctly).

Another ex-Googler, Douglas Edwards, confirms the story in his book "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59":

Dennis Hwang spent the day before the launch coming up with ideas for a logo and trying to make it work in conjunction with the clown-colored Google brand. (...) Even after four years at Google, I found it astounding that one twenty-something guy was sitting alone at his desk, sipping tea and developing the main branding element for a product to be used by millions of people - the night before it was scheduled to launch.

Belgian Fries in Google Street View

Nikolaas, a reader of this blog, noticed that Pegman - the Google Street View icon - looks different for Belgium. When you try to move the icon, you'll notice that Pegman got some French fries.


"Occasionally Pegman dresses up for special events and occasions, or is even joined by peg friends in Google Maps. Some of these icons stay in Google Maps for specific locations, such as the skiing Pegman at Whistler Blackcomb Mountain and the penguin for Street View imagery of Half Moon Island, Antarctica," explains Google.

Street View was launched two months ago in Belgium, but it's not clear why Pegman looks different. Maybe because French fries originate from Belgium.

{ Thanks, Nikolaas. }

Google Search, Punctuation Marks and Other Symbols

Google usually ignores punctuation and mathematical symbols from a query because it doesn't index them. They rarely change the meaning of a query and Google's index would have to grow a lot bigger, without improving the results too much. Some punctuation marks and mathematical symbols are used to provide advanced features (for example: colon, quotes, minus sign, plus sign).

I've recently noticed that Google started to show results for queries like [.], [,], [:], [;], [#], [%], [@], [^], [)], [~], [|], ["], [<], [$]. When you search for [%], Google shows the results for [percent sign] and that happens irrespective of the interface language, so it's not a synonym generated by Google's algorithms.


Search for [:] and you'll get the results for [colon]. Most results are about the colon from the human anatomy and they're not relevant.

A New iGoogle Interface

Google tests a new interface for iGoogle, the personalized homepage that lets you add gadgets and themes. The updated interface uses the design patterns that should be familiar by now from other Google services. Tabs are now available in a dropdown that's displayed below the search box, while the left sidebar is only used for the chat widget. There are two buttons for adding gadgets and changing the theme next to the options menu.





{ Thanks, Brinke. }

Picnik and Other Discontinued Google Services

If you thought that Google will no longer close other projects this year, you were wrong. Picnik, one of the best online photo editing service, will no longer be available starting from April 20. Until then, you can use all the features from the paid version of Picnik for free. Google will focus on adding more Picnik features to Google+ and that's the reason why Picnik is discontinued.


Social Graph API, a great way to find public profiles and connections between people, will no longer be available. The service was used by Google to find your social connections and show social search results. Unfortunately, "the API isn't experiencing the kind of adoption we'd like, and is being deprecated as of today. It will be fully retired on April 20, 2012."

Google will also discontinue Urchin (the installable version of Google Analytics), Google Message Continuity (an enterprise service that allowed Microsoft Exchange customers to back up emails to Google's servers), Needlebase (a data management platform acquired from ITA Software) and Sky Map (an Android app developed "to show off the amazing capabilities of the sensors in the first-generation Android phones and offer a window into the sky"). Sky Map was open sourced and will be developed by Carnegie Mellon University students.

Google promises to take "a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven't achieved the promise we had hoped for or can't be properly integrated into the overall Google experience," so I'm sure we'll see other discontinued projects. From Orkut to Google Talk (the Windows software), from Patent Search to Google Bookmarks and Translator Toolkit, from iGoogle to Picasa, there are many projects that might be discontinued. Moving from standalone applications to platforms, Google gets rid of many tools that solved only one problem and tries to convince users to join all-encompassing services like Google+ or Google Apps.

If Google Results Aren't Helpful, Ask on Google+

Sometimes Google's results aren't that useful and they don't answer your question. Maybe the query is imprecise or obscure, the results are outdated or you don't have the patience to check the first 100 results to find something helpful. Asking your Twitter followers or your Facebook friends could be a great idea. Google doesn't integrate with Twitter or Facebook, but it experiments with a new feature that shows a message below the list of results: "Want to ask your friends about [your query]? Ask on Google+".


Clicking the link opens a Google+ box that already includes a message: "Hi there! I have a question about [my query]..." Edit your message, click "Ask" and the first results could show up in a few seconds in Google's notification widget.


Maybe Google+ also will include a revamped version of Aardvark and you'll be able to send your question to the right people.

New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+

If you try to create a Google account from Google's homepage, you'll notice that Google redesigned the page, but that's not all. You'll now have to create a Gmail account, a Google Profile and you'll automatically join Google+.

Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple. You could either use an existing email address or create a Gmail account. The redesigned form includes new fields: name, gender (required for Google+) and mobile phone number (not required).



"Your Google Account is more than just Search. Talk, chat, share, schedule, store, organize, collaborate, discover and create. Use Google products from Gmail to Google+ to YouTube, view your search history, all with one username and password, all backed up all the time and easy to find at (you guessed it) Google.com," informs the page.

You can still delete your Google profile, the Google+ content and also your Gmail account.

New users no longer have to manually create a profile and join Google+, while Google found another way to increase the number of Google+ users (currently at 90 million) and the number of Gmail users (currently at 350 million). I've always wondered why Google never offered the option to create a Gmail account when you sign up for a Google account and now that's the only way to create a Google account.

Update: You can still use the old form if you know the URL or if you click "Sign up for a new Google Account" in Google Calendar, Blogger and probably a few other Google products.



Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Groups use a different page that lets you sign up using a Gmail address or a different email account. Just click "use a different email" and you'll see the old form.


Update 2. A Google spokesperson sent the following statement: "We're working to develop a consistent sign-up flow across our different products as part of our efforts to create an intuitive, beautifully simple, Google-wide user experience. Making it quick and easy to create a Google Account and a Google profile enables new users to take advantage of everything Google can offer."

{ Thanks, Herin. }

Highlight Areas in Google Maps

Rodney G., a reader of this blog noticed a new feature in Google Maps. "When you search for a city or a county or a ZIP Code, Google Maps now highlights the boundaries of what you searched for. If you are zoomed out, the whole area is shaded pink. If you zoom in a bit, it has just a big pink border with grey shading. Zoom in even more and it's a dashed boundary with grey shading."




It's a really useful feature and the nice thing is that's enabled by default. Just search for a country, a city, a state or a ZIP code and Google Maps will automatically highlight it.

{ Thanks, Rodney. }

Google Code Search, Still Available

Google closed a lot of useful services to focus on Google+ and other core offerings. One of the best services that was recently shut down is Code Search, a search engine for open source code. If you go to google.com/codesearch, you'll see the following message:

"Sorry! Sadly, this service has been shut down. Much of Code Search's functionality is available at Google Code Hosting including search for Chromium. We're very sorry for the inconvenience."


Even though Google says that the service has been shut down, it hasn't. Just go to http://code.google.com/codesearch and you'll see the old homepage. All of the old features are still available and the results aren't restricted to Google Code Hosting projects.

Google's Censored Logo

Google censored its homepage logo in the US to protest against two bills that could damage the Internet and destroy its core values. "Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA," explains Google.

Google's homepage also includes a link that asks users to "tell Congress: please don't censor the Internet." The censored logo is only available in the US, but the link is also displayed outside US.


While the new bills may seem to be well-intended, they're easy to abuse and they'll not stop piracy. "These bills would grant new powers to law enforcement to filter the Internet and block access to tools to get around those filters. We know from experience that these powers are on the wish list of oppressive regimes throughout the world. SOPA and PIPA also eliminate due process. They provide incentives for American companies to shut down, block access to and stop servicing U.S. and foreign websites that copyright and trademark owners allege are illegal without any due process or ability of a wrongfully targeted website to seek restitution," mentions a Google blog post.

Google's suggestion is to cut the funding for pirate sites. For example, ad services would be required to stop providing ads for sites created to infringe copyright and payment services would no longer be allowed to intermediate transactions between US residents and the company that owns the pirate site. I'm not sure that's a great idea because this law could also be abused.

Wikipedia and WordPress were a lot braver: they decided to make it more difficult to access their content. "For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia." That's the message you'll see today when you visit a page from the English Wikipedia (unless you press Escape before the page loads, you disable JavaScript, you visit Google's cached pages or use a plugin like Readability). Probably Google didn't want to divert all its search traffic to Bing and other search engines, but many top search results are Wikipedia pages, so Wikipedia's blackout will affect Google users.

Google Account Authentication Using Your Phone

How do you login to your Google account on a computer you don't trust? When you type your username and password, a keylogger could capture them and save them. If you have a phone or a tablet with you, there's a better way:

1. Just go to accounts.google.com/sesame on your computer (Open Sesame helps you remember the address) and you'll see a QR code for a special URL generated by Google.

2. Use a QR reader app like QR Reader for iPhone, Barcode Scanner for Android, Google Goggles, Google Shopper or Google Search for iOS. Scan the QR code on your phone or tablet and type the username and password of your Google account.

3. Now you can click "Start with Gmail" or "Start with iGoogle" and the corresponding service will automatically load in the desktop browser. Obviously, you can use any other Google service.



Update: Apparently, it was just an experiment and it no longer works. "Thanks for your interest in our phone-based login experiment. While we have concluded this particular experiment, we constantly experiment with new and more secure authentication mechanisms. Stay tuned for something even better," says Dirk Balfanz from the Google Security Team.

{ Thanks, Petros. }

Blocked Sites, No Longer Available in Google Search?

Last year, Google released a feature that allowed you to block sites from appearing in your search results. After clicking a result and going back to the search results page, Google displayed a special link next to the result for blocking the entire domain.

The feature no longer seems to work: the "block" link is no longer displayed, the preferences page doesn't mention the feature and the blocked domains still appear in Google's results. The page that allows you to manage blocked sites is still available.

"When you're signed in to Google, you can block a specific website from appearing in your future search results. This is a helpful option when you encounter a site that you don't like and whose pages you want to remove from your future results. If you change your mind, you can unblock the site at any point," explains a help center page.


Update: Google's Matt Cutts says that this could be a temporary issue. "The right people are looking at what needs to happen to re-enable this, but it might take some time."