Day: September 17, 2018

Ever since an online right-wing rag recently released a leaked copy of a corporate “TGIF” meeting at Google (recorded a couple of days after the election of Donald Trump), I’ve been receiving emails from various Trump supporters pointing at various short, out of context clips from that video to try make the argument that a vast, conspiratorial political bias by Google is on display.

This is utter nonsense. And a viewing of the entire now public meeting recording (https://lauren.vortex.com/g-tgif) not only reveals a lack of bias, but should inspire a completely different set of reactions — namely confidence and pride.

For in this video we see exactly what I for one would have hoped to see from the leaders of a powerful corporation under such circumstances — expressions of personal concern, but a clear determination not to permit personal feelings to skew or bias Google search engine or other services.

As I watched this video, I found myself almost constantly nodding my head in agreement. Frankly, if I had been up there on that stage I would have been sorely tempted to state my concerns regarding the election’s outcome in somewhat stronger language. And let’s face it, events in the ensuing nearly two years since that election have proven these kinds of concerns to have been utterly justified.

The motives of the Google or ex-Googler who originally leaked this TGIF video are obvious enough — to try feed into the alt-right’s false narratives of claimed political bias at Google. 

In this respect that person failed miserably, because any fair-minded individual viewing the entire video cannot fail to see corporate leaders explicitly keeping their personal feelings separate from corporate policies. 

That’s not to say that this nefarious leaker hasn’t done real damage inside Google. Reportedly, internal access to TGIF videos has been greatly restricted in the wake of the leak. That’s bad news all around — open discussion of sometimes controversial issues inside Google is key not only to Google’s success, but is important to Google’s users and the global community as well.

And of course the leaker has now spawned a plethora of additional right-wing articles attacking various Google execs, and a range of new wacky false conspiracy theories, including the bizarre notion that the beanie propeller hats typically worn by new Google employees are actually some kind of creepy cult symbolism. Give me a break! Apparently these conspiracy idiots never saw “Beany & Cecil” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMdReHP9cb0).

Google — like all firms — is made up of human beings, and a person hasn’t walked this planet who qualifies as perfect. But when I watch this video, I see a group of people working very hard to do the right thing, to keep Google firmly on an unbiased and even keel despite personal disappointments.

And yes, that makes me very proud of Google and Googlers.

–Lauren–

In previous posts, including “Here’s How to Disable Google Chrome’s Confusing New URL Hiding Scheme” (https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/09/07/heres-how-to-disable-google-chromes-confusing-new-url-hiding-scheme), I’ve noted the serious security and other problems related to Google Chrome’s new policy of hiding parts of site URLs.

Google has now — sort of, temporarily — backed off on these changes.

In a post over on the Chromium blog, at:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=883038

they note that URL subdomain hiding (Google uses the term “elide” — how often do you see that one?) is being rolled back in Chrome M69, but the post also says that they plan to begin hiding — I mean “eliding” — www again in M70, but not “m” (no doubt because they realized what a potential mess that made over on Tumblr). They also say that they’ll initiate a discussion with standards bodies about this to reserve “www or m” as hidden subdomains.

The comments on that Chromium post appear to be virtually universally opposed to Google’s hiding any elements of URLs. At the very least, it’s obvious that Google should not begin such URL modifications again until after such a time (if ever) that standards bodies have acted in these regards, and I would argue that these bodies should not do so in the manner that Google is now pushing.

The www and m subdomains have been integral parts of the user experience on the Web for decades. Tampering with them now (especially www) makes no sense, and (along with the other action that Google took at the same time — hiding the crucial http:// and https:// prefixes that are key signals regarding communications security) just puts users in an even more vulnerable position, as I discussed in “Chrome Is Hiding URL Details — and It’s Confusing People Already!” (https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/07/10/chrome-is-hiding-url-details-and-its-confusing-people-already).

We can certainly have a vibrant discussion regarding additional signals that could help users to detect phishing and other URL-related attacks, but any and all changes to URL displays (including involving http, https, m, www, and so on) should only take place if and after there is broad community agreement that such changes are actually user positive.

Google should completely cease all of these URL changes, permanently, unless such criteria are met.

–Lauren–