Google's chrome - shaking the browser market

Just a few years ago, Microsoft would have thought that it had sewn up the browser market; then came Firefox (backed by Google as well). Firefox won a lot of converts, and seemed like the open source alternative to a market that Microsoft had almost totally won, and it won a significant minority of the browser market. For the first time after Netscape, there seemed like an open source alternative in the form of Firefox; and now, Google seems suddenly to buck all the open source support and launch its own browser called Chrome - in the process, it seems to have withdrawn support from Firefox.
Chrome however promises much more to people everywhere, an open source software that can actually serve as the backbone for an alternative to the standard desktop - no longer will applications have to choose between the desktop and the internet:

Far from a betrayal, Chrome represents the best possible future for open source developers everywhere. What Google has delivered is a giant-slayer, a self-contained WebOS that could one day supplant Microsoft's desktop hegemony. Chrome is the ultimate end-run -- around Windows, Win32/.Net, the whole entrenched ecosystem.
This is the future of FOSS, a future where Chrome becomes the OS and Linux is relegated to its rightful place as a glorified boot loader. You know that's where they're headed. You know that's Google's master plan. The wunderkinds envision a world where the OS is irrelevant, where everything revolves around their pumped-up browser and advertising-laced SaaS offerings.

Right now Chrome only exists for the Windows platform, but versions for other operating systems will be available; and one can bet that pretty soon we will start seeing applications that are made for Chrome, that showcase this platform and live up to all its promises.

The Browser wars - a new version

Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that the browser wars were from a different era. After the initial clashes between Microsoft and Netscape and the victory by Microsoft in these wars (ignoring any possible challenge by the nascent Opera at that time), the era of the Browser soon stagnated. Microsoft puts development work on a new version of Internet Explorer seemingly in cold storage.
And then came in the 2 aspects that changed the game: The emergence of Firefox as a strong contender for the title of the most popular browser (it helped that it was seen as a better and more standards compliant browser + a number of add-ons started getting developed for the browser); the other major game that has changed the rules was the emergence of Google as a company that makes most of its money from ads (with most of these ads coming in from the ads that appear when a user makes a search). Now it seems that the competition is hotting up, with Opera and Firefox releasing new versions, and Microsoft currently working through the public beta. Already, the release of Opera and Firefox has lead to an evaluation of which is better, and the answer depends on which way you look at things of Internet Explorer 8:

Firefox 3 is, of course, the big news of the week, pulling down eight million or so downloads in its first 24 hours in the wild. However, the Opera browser updated to its much-awaited version 9.5 last week. Empirically, the two most-cited complaints about browsers are speed and memory.
Using the SunSpider JavaScript test, Firefox 3 scored around 5500 microseconds to process the tested scripts, with a margin of error at around three percent. Opera 9.5 scored about 7280 microseconds on the same test, with a margin of error around 1.5 percent, making it nearly one and a third times as slow as Firefox 3.

And we have not even included the effort by Apple to make the Safari browser more mainstream, depending on the iPhone bundling Safari to really give it a push. The winner may not be the best (and anyhow, it depends on which test you use).

Apple starts disabling hacked iPhones

After the release of the iPhone, there was some consternation over the non-release of the iPhone outside the United States; it was speculated that hacked copies of the iPhone would be available outside the United States and that this was a natural occurrence. Apple would not be able to do anything about this. Well, looks like the design of Apple's engineers had actually planned for this. So, the latest firmware update to the iPhone has actually disabled the iPhone, apparently permanently for those people who have hacked iPhones. But is this the last statement on this matter ?

The iPhone 1.1.1 update, released Thursday, breaks phones that have been hacked so that they work with providers other than AT&T Inc., the only U.S. provider Apple has allowed to carry its mobile phones. Apple has said that it would fight any attempts to unlock the iPhone. Earlier this week the company released a warning that unlocked iPhones "will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed."
The new software is Apple's biggest iPhone update to date, and it fixes a number of security flaws in the mobile phone's browser, mail client and Bluetooth networking server. The majority of the flaws do not appear to be critical, but the update fixes a larger number of bugs than the first iPhone update, released July 31.
Mobile phone users typically cannot update their own software, but Apple introduced this capability in the iPhone, which uses the update mechanism in the phone's iTunes music player. iTunes checks for these updates once per week, so it may take up to seven days for all iPhone users to see these updates. Apple advises users to install the update immediately.

Now, while this patch fixes bugs in the iPhone and should be installed by users, it is unlikely that the hacker community will accept this matter as a fait accompli. It's a gauntlet that Apple has thrown to the hacker community, and with the hacks spawning a new business, there is a major commercial angle to it. Thus, it is likely that hackers will now start to put their creative thoughts on how to defeat this latest attempt by Apple.

Microsoft releases version 1.0 of Silverlight

In the latest development in the battle for getting the leading technology in the area of browsing capabilities and internet applications (also known as Silverlight vs. Flash), Microsoft has released the first version of Silverlight 1.0, touted as a rich media player. And, since no release is good without showing some level of support and incorporation, Microsoft also announced its early bird partners, organizations that have started using Silverlight. These include Home Shopping Network, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Entertainment Tonight (a TV show), Netflix, CBS Corp's TV division, MLB.com and with an additional 35 companies signed on.

Microsoft hopes such partnerships will help drive more than 200 million downloads of the player by the end of June next year. Microsoft is consciously not pushing Silverlight to users out via Windows Update, preferring to stimulate demand for the product through its partnerships.
Microsoft is making its move on turf currently controlled by Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash player, which is used by YouTube videos, for example. The beta and release candidate versions of Silverlight, which boasts 720p high-definition video that trumps the existing version of Flash, have garnered several million downloads so far, Goldfarb said.

And this is the true test. Adobe so far has been the owner of this space, with Flash and Flash Video being the dominant players. Now with the entry of Microsoft, which has its massive OS base and an equally massive marketing strength, it remains to be seen as to how this challenge will fare. Microsoft is also trying something different, with actually partnering with Novell to release a Linux version of Silverlight, a indication of how seriously it views the future of Silverlight.

Hacking the iPhone and ease of hacking the Mac

For a long time, Apple and Mac users have disdained the PC and Windows as very bad in security, and instead tom-tommed the relative lower number of hacks on the Mac. Microsoft has always been on the defensive in terms of security, and the large number of cracks and holes available on the OS and apps have always led them to be worried. There have been people who have been saying that Mac has not shown so many cracks just because it has a 5% market share, and people have not found it worth their while to try and break through the Mac OS security:

Though there has yet to be any documented criminal hijacking of the iPhone outside of a lab, Miller says his research shows the relative ease of hacking smart phones, as well as Macs in general. He spoke with Forbes.com about the iPhone's vulnerabilities, Apple's short-lived patch and the company's undeserved reputation for building secure computers.
There are two issues with the iPhone. First, the specific weakness that we found in its Web browser. But there's a more fundamental problem. The iPhone runs everything as "root." In other words, there are no privileges for different users. They should have built layers of security. Instead, if you can find a single crack, any user has the entire phone at their disposal. Last week they basically patched a hole in the wall. But inside, it's still pudding.
Bad guys aren't yet targeting Macs because they want to maximize their time. That means writing viruses that target 95% of computers rather than 5%. Apple currently has around 3.5% of the market, but its market share is growing by around 35% a year. As Mac's numbers creep up to 30% or 40%, cyber-criminals will start asking whether it's better to spend two weeks writing a bug for Windows or just a couple days to write one for Macs.

Almost nothing in this interview is complementary to Mac, but one tends to agree with what he says. Windows is the dominant OS, and most hackers are anyhow biased against Microsoft, in addition people are ready to believe that Windows is inherently insecure, and hence most hackers target Microsoft. Now that the iPhone is a well advertised target, one can expect many more Black Hat hackers to target the iPhone for benefit, and for Apple to be on the backfoot.

Gphone: Google Phone ?

There have been rumours of a Google phone (short form 'Gphone') for some time now. Now Google is a search company, or rather it is a company that is trying to do a lot of things, but which makes most of its money from search. It has tried to enter the mobile world through a tie-up with carriers about placing Google search in the mobile space. Now carriers are typically very hard creatures to work with; they don't allow much freedom.
And there was this revolution that happened. Apple released the iPhone in a tie up with AT & T, but shockingly for the telecom industry, it was Apple that called the shots. This was a new type of device with a lot of hype, and hence AT & T would have allowed this. But any such move does set a precedent that Google could easily try and copy:

The company, which has made billions of dollars in Web advertising on computers, is courting wireless operators to carry handsets customized to Google products, including its search engine, email and a new mobile Web browser, say people familiar with the plans. It wants to capture a big chunk of the fast-growing market for ads on cellphones.
Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the cellphone project, say people who have been briefed on it. It has developed prototype handsets, made overtures to operators such as T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, and talked over technical specifications with phone manufacturers. It hopes multiple manufacturers will make devices based on its specs and multiple carriers will offer them.

For Google, the mobile market is the hottest new emerging market, and must be the focus of a lot of strategy sessions at Google headquarters. Carriers have been not so easy to convince, but Google's might and the precedent of the iPhone could change things. If Google does come out with a cellphone, then one would expect more Wi-Fi integration and other methods of browsing, something uncomfortable to carriers since that is outside of their data plans.
The further advantage of having ads on cell phones is that they can be targeted better, and hence Google can ask for and earn more revenue per ad. One thing is sure, Google will do all they can to get an entry into this business, even if it means buying up spectrum and launching itself as a carrier.

Sprint network to use Google Search

Google is already a leader in the Internet Search market, is competing with Microsoft in the desktop search, and now has made an entry in the mobile search market. It has announced a tie-up with Sprint Nextel Corp that will add the Google search and mapping services to Sprint's high-speed wireless network. This is a good deal for Sprint in the sense that Google is a world-leader in the area of search and has an excellent brand name.
Sprint's plan is to create a high speed WiMax network that will be 5 times faster than today's networks, and will cover a city wide area. It can be used by devices other than mobile phones, given that it is actually a wireless network accessible by all devices that support this kind of connection. Once this network is rolled out, it is a service that Sprint will charge for, and Google will be available on the home page of this network.

The agreement gives Reston, Va.-based Sprint the prestige of working with the most popular search engine, along with a source of revenue, West said. For Google, the deal brings a way to extend its search engine into the mobile-device market.
West said Google will pay Sprint as part of the agreement, declining to be specific. Sprint and Craig McCaw's Clearwire Corp. said last week they would use a technology called WiMax to build a wireless network that's more than five times faster than today's standard.

This deal is a big deal for Google. Given the speed with which the mobile platform is proliferating and the increased tendency to build devices that allow for internet access, it is important for Google to be available on this platform. In addition, given that there is a class of devices that use Microsoft's Mobile platform, one can be sure that Google will not be the default search on those devices, so Google needs to network with all other providers and platforms.

Duke and iPhone resolve problems

Earlier this week, there was a major issue over the iPhone apparently causing a Denial of Service attacks on the Duke wireless network, and the issue quickly blew up. Apple would have been in the forefront of attempts to make sure that this issue gets resolved due to the potential bad publicity for the iPhone. Well, it's now blown over, and Apple gets a clean chit:

Initial reports of the problem placed the blame for the outages squarely on Apple's iPhones, which flooded the Cisco WAPs (Wireless Access Points) with thousands of address requests per second. However, in a statement released this afternoon, Cisco Systems admitted that the problem was caused by a Cisco glitch.
The problem could be particular to Duke. Other large universities—specifically the University of Wisconsin at Madison—have not experienced problems with its registered iPhones and Cisco-based Wi-Fi network, according to Dave Schroeder, an administrator in UW's Division of Information Technology. "We have seen upwards of 120 unique iPhones since June 30 on our campus-wide wireless infrastructure, which also uses Cisco 802.11b/g access points. To date, we have not encountered or detected any undesirable behavior from iPhones," said Schroeder. "As I have also not heard reports of errant 802.11 iPhone behavior from any other institution or site, it appears that the issue at Duke may be unique. There may be something unique to Duke's particular wireless installation configuration that the iPhone may be exposing," he added.

Of course, that is something that needs to be investigated further. There is something in the Duke network that was causing the problems to happen, and there is no certainty that such issues will not happen again.
There is an additional comment in the bottom of the article quoted above that could also cause certain problems

"My suspicion is that Duke's network requires Cisco's (Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) security encryption and the iPhone doesn't have that incorporated into it. That could be a source of the problem," said Van Baker, a research vice president at Gartner in San Jose, Calif.
"Cisco's LEAP is an enterprise deployment not seen in the consumer market at all. The iPhone doesn't have a lot of the features you'd normally expect to see in an enterprise class phone," he added.

This was certainly a negative comment by an analyst, and this is something that Apple needs to quickly address. Apple would want this phone to be adapted in the enterprise segment as well, those segments carry a number of phones with them.

Security company warns against using iPhone's web dialer

The iPhone has a great new feature, and since it is a combination phone and browser, the feature can work really well for most users. But like any other new great feature, there is tremendous capability for misuse, and seeing the ease of misuse, security companies are warning users against using this feature, or to be very careful when using this feature.
What is the feature? Well, the iPhone uses Safari as a web browser. Now, if the web site displays a phone number, all that the user has to do is to click on the phone number in the browser, and the number will get dialed. This is a great feature, but so is the scope for misuse. Imagine the phone in the hand of a neophyte who is viewing some 'interesting' site on the browser, and there is a number displayed along with a catchy slogan. Press the number, and if the number is an international number, or a fraud number, the calls could become very expensive very soon.

Attackers could exploit a bug in this feature to trick a victim into making phone calls to expensive "900" numbers or even keep track of phone calls made by the victim over the Web, said Billy Hoffman, lead researcher with SPI Labs. The iPhone could even be stopped from dialing out, or set to dial out endlessly, he said.
In order for the attack to work, the bad guys would have to either trick iPhone users into visiting a malicious Web site or make a legitimate Web site send untrustworthy information to the iPhone using what's known as a cross-site scripting attack. "Any time someone could control the content that's getting sent to the iPhone [the possibility of an attack] exists," Hoffman said.

It is not as difficult as it looks. It is actually as easy as letting the iPhone be used by a child or by somebody else who is not so experienced, and it is not difficult to create a site that will look attractive and feature this kind of mischief. But as of now there is no way to prevent it, so being careful is the only good way of dealing with this problem.

Safari on Windows already with 1 million downloads

When Steve Jobs released the beta of its web browser, Safari on Windows at a worldwide developer's conference, he may not have expected this kind of response. This release was also broadcast as the release of the fastest surfing software for Windows.
Even though the browser got hit by security problems and Apple has already released 3 patches to fix major security issues (and Steve Jobs would certainly not have been happy at such adverse publicity about such major problems), it was successful in another front. Within 48 hours of release, Safari got more than 1 million downloads.
Whether this spurt will continue or not is unknown, although Apple would be hoping that it become as popular in the browser application area as iTunes is in the cross-platform music buying and playing software. Safari is currently trailing IE and Firefox in the browser wars, with only 5% (native Mac users) as opposed to IE's 80% and Firefox's 15% market share. If Apple wants to come out with some strength in the browser wars, it will need to push the browser much more.
It will have to come out with more plugin support, not be too different in terms of interface from IE and Firefox, and be very easy to use.

Google bows before EU data privacy requests

How these mighty corporations tumble before government pressures. Google has done that in the past, with creating a censored version of search for China (http://www.google.cn/), bowing down to pressures from governments about the level of details displayed for Government and military structures in Google Earth, and so on. Well, here is one more.
Google saves search data (that could be used to identify actual people after some research) and uses that for commercial purposes, to better target advertising. Earlier, it used to save this data indefinitely, then changed that to 24 months after some pressure from privacy advocates.
Then in May, Google got another blast on this topic. It got told by the European Union data watchdog (representing 27 EU countries) that the 24 month period was unacceptable under privacy concerns, and asked Google to reply by mid-June about how these concerns could be addressed. Well, now Google seems to have buckled under pressure and is now reducing the time that this data will be stored to 18 months (from the earlier 24 months). Refer this article:

The European Union's top security official lauded Google Inc's. decision to scale back how long it keeps personally identifiable data accumulated from its Web users as a step towards addressing privacy concerns.
The world's top provider of Web search services said this week it was ready to curtail the time it stored user data to a year and a half, seeking to mollify an EU watchdog that has questioned its privacy policies.
Each time a Google user searches the Web, the company gathers information about that customer's tastes, interests and beliefs that could potentially be used by third parties such as advertisers. Google shares general user statistics but is adamant it never shares personal data outside the company.

However, this is still right now only Google that has made the concession. To some extent this is justified since Google controls 60% of the search market, but a lot of other searches such as MSN, Yahoo, etc and other companies such as Microsoft, Apple, MySpace, AOL, eBay, Amazon, also have not disclosed as to how long they retain customer data. It would be their turn eventually; it just requires an accidental release of data from any of these places, and they will face the same amount of pressure as Google.

Problems in using Safari on Windows

Apple is on a high nowadays. It is seen as the leader in computing design, has the by-far-largest selling product in the personal media player market, has ownership of the iPhone (probably the most hotly awaited product for some time), and seems to have played a master stroke by moving its Mac onto an Intel machine, this allowing people the option to install windows on their Mac machines and pushing up the sales of Macs. However, there comes a time when a company gets too arrogant, and then realizes that arrogance is not a virtue (especially when the arrogance is revealed to be based on false premises). Microsoft has faced this repeatedly in the past, especially in the area of security (both for operating systems and applications); claiming that their apps are secure, and then facing a number of holes pointed out by hackers and security specialists. Well, the high and mighty Apple faces the same situation today with Safari.
Safari, the default browser on the Mac, is now available on Windows as a Beta, and I read reports where Apple claimed that this browser is secure. Well, no longer. Security experts, no doubt encouraged by Apple's claims, found numerous security holes in this Beta of Safari such as Denial of Service support, remote execution bugs, memory corruption, etc, As time goes by, more such errors will be found. This article claims that the Beta of Safari should not be used for actual web use because of its bugs.

Although all browsers have security issues uncovered on a relatively regular basis, most of which are rapidly patched up with updates and fixes, the latest beta version of Safari has been put to the test by a number of security researchers, as reported by PC Magazine and others, and is so far failing a lot of security tests.
Problems with Safari uncovered so far include DoS and remote execution bugs, memory corruption that could be exploited, command execution vulnerabilities simply by visiting a web site – and that’s just in the last couple of days. Security researchers are bound to find more bugs in the system, or more ghosts in the machine for Apple to eliminate.
So, should you use Safari on Windows? After all, plenty of Windows users will have downloaded Safari since its release on Monday, and will no doubt have had a surf around to see what it’s like. It looks and feels just like Safari on the Mac, it’s certainly fun to use. For now, it’s also the latest novelty must-have experience from Apple that Windows users can enjoy. Apple’s download servers must be running hot!

Safari is indeed hot, after all, it is the browser on the iPhone, which itself lends to a lot of pull for the browser. However, Firefox is a pretty strong competitor on a number of platforms, so it is not sure as to how much Safari can take away from established browsers.