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Google Secure Access, Insecure?
Google Secure Access which we covered yesterday might not be that secure after all according to WiTopia (who make a competing solution, it should be noted). Mike at TechDirt elaborates on the technical details:
Assuming the basic claims they're making are true (and it would be pretty easy for someone with the VPN client to check), then this solution really isn't particularly secure -- which is surprising, because it wouldn't have been hard to lock this down much tighter. The basic summary sent in by Feed Mesh is that the VPN uses PPTP instead of SSL. That's not entirely horrible if the PPTP offering is better locked down, but it doesn't appear to be (and SSL would have been a better overall solution no matter what). They're allowing both CHAP and MS-CHAP (v1) which have well known issues (as the Full Mesh guys point out, just check Google for lots of info on the problems with CHAP and MS-CHAP). Finally, they let pretty much everything pass through the VPN, rather than just TCP/IP.
Yahoo Hires Ron Belanger
SearchEngineWatch reports how Ron Belanger -- former vice president of search marketing at Carat Interactive, and more recently vice president of marketing at BuyDomains.com since Aug 17 this year -- has again jumped shipped. Ron Belanger has now been hired as Senior Director of Global Advertiser Strategy and Development at YSM (Yahoo Search Marketing).
Start.com Goes Multilingual
Search Engine Watch notes, Start.com -- MSN's rapid development personalised start page -- now supports the following languages: English--Australian, English--US, English--UK, French, German, Italian. Japanese, Spanish, Spanish--US.
Ask Jeeves To Be Rebranded as Ask
Although the signs were there already, CEO of Ask Jeeves, Barry Diller has confirmed Ask Jeeves will be re branded sans Jeeves:
Jeeves is out of a job.
IAC/InterActiveCorp. (IACI:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) is dropping the butler who doubles as the mascot of its recently acquired Ask Jeeves online search business.
The New York-based online empire, which acquired Ask Jeeves for $1.9 billion in July, plans to rebrand the Web site as Ask.com, CEO Barry Diller said Wednesday at an investment conference. Just a month ago the butler's job seemed to be safe.
Yahoo Ties in More Services to SERPs
According to their Search Blog, Yahoo have integrated more of their services directly into search results, including local, maps, and SMS features. To minimize clutter the system supposedly uses an "abstract generating algorithm" to only "show most used information."
Google Print Sued by Authors Guild
According to CNET, Google is being sued by the Authors Guild over the alleged "massive" copyright infringement undertaken by its Google Print project:
Nick Taylor, president of the New York-based Authors Guild says:This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law
Google have responded to the allegations in their blog.
Orkut Becomes Fully Integrated With Google Services
DaveN notices Orkut (owned by Google) now imposes Google Accounts on its users:
In order to unify our services, we’re asking all orkut users to upgrade to a Google Account. Once you do so, you’ll be able to sign in to orkut and numerous other Google services with a single email address and password. If you have any questions, check out our FAQ.
Google targets IE7
Philipp at Google Blogscoped notes, Google not content with being the default search in Firefox's, targets IE7 users with a nifty prompt. See the screenshot -- posted on Google Blogscoped -- of Google's homepage as seen in IE7 for further explanation.
