Google discovers new security holes in SSL — is the entire system fundamentally flawed?

The reason it’s critical that companies not mint certificates for websites they don’t operate themselves is because doing so breaks the function of SSL itself. Here’s how the system is supposed to operate:Google has discovered that an intermediate certificate authority had issued unauthorized certificates for multiple Google domains. The problem arose because the intermediate authority, MCS Holdings, had issued certificates for the Google domains, despite not holding those domains itself.

Google confirms it will offer carrier services, may operate Google brand across pre-existing network

Google has confirmed it intends to operate some type of phone service, likely in partnership with an existing carrier. Previous reports have floated the idea that Google might become a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), which would give it the ability to launch a comprehensive service over a partner’s wires without taking on the infrastructure expense or difficulty of building its own network.

Google’s senior VP, Sundar Pichai,has now confirmed that the search giant has a mobile service in the works, but has on been vague on its details or capabilities. In his discussion with journalists, Pichai likened Google’s experiments as a carrier with its work on the Nexus family or its various other products and testbeds.

Which mobile apps drain your battery the most?

The anti-virus company AVG Technologies has released its latest report on which Android applications are the most likely to chew through your phone’s data storage, battery life, and data plan. The combined data set is quite interesting, particularly since some of the worst offenders aren’t necessarily applications you’d think of.

AVG collected data on users in the United States, Australia, and the UK and found it was statistically significant enough to draw conclusions from. Data-plan traffic only included transfers over cellular networks, and the storage evaluation included data that the app downloaded after install — not just the listed size in the Google Play store.

Microsoft to accelerate Bing search with neural network

Google’s engineers have previously estimated that a typical 0.2-second web query reflects a quantity of work spent in indexing and retrieval equal to about 0.0003 kWh of energy per search. With over 100 billion looks per month at their petabyte index, well-executed page ranking has become a formidable proposition. Microsoft’s approach with Bing has been to break the ranking portion of search into three parts — feature extraction, free-form expressions, and machine learning scoring:When we search Google’s web index, we are only searching around 10 percent of the half-a-trillion or so pages that are potentially available. Much of the content in the larger deep web — not to be confused with the dark web — is buried further down in the sites that make up the visible surface web. The indexes of competitors like Yahoo and Bing (around 15 billion pages each) are still only half as large as Google’s. To close this gap, Microsoft has recently pioneered sophisticated new Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology to make massive web crawls more efficient, and faster.

Google confirms Chromebook Pixel 2, but tempers expectations

As Google likes to point out, the original Pixel was intended to be both a proof-of-concept for a high-end Chromebook (rather than a fully fledged consumer product), and a platform for development. This time around, Google appears to be stressing this intent much more — making it clear (through public relations!) that, basically, the Pixel 2 isn’t for you, effectively preventing all sales criticism before it arises.Two years ago, Google released theflashy, expensive Pixel in order to show off the potential of the Chromebook. The hefty $1,300 price tag and lofty specs seemed to suggest that Google misunderstood the market for its new laptop ecosystem — the Chromebook ended up making a splash in the more affordable educational and workplace market, which is the exact opposite market into which a $1,300 laptop would fall. Affordable Chromebooks took off — specifically Acer’s Core i3 offering — but the Pixel remained an amusing pariah of high-end potential. Despite the lack of sales success, the Pixel is coming back, and it aims to be a little less ridiculous by being more specialized than the first.

US judge dismisses antitrust case against Google over Android apps

A U.S. federal judge has dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that charges Google harmed consumers by forcing Android handset makers to use its apps by default, but gave the plaintiffs three weeks to amend their complaint.

The two consumers who filed the suit failed to show that Google’s allegedly illegal restrictive contracts on manufacturers of Android devices resulted in higher prices on phones, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said in a Feb. 20 ruling.

The complainants, who were seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, said that Google required manufacturers including Samsung Electronics to set the search giant’s own apps as default options on Android-based phones, restricting access to competing software such as Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The complaint alleged that this practice limited competition in the search engine market, stifled innovation and resulted in higher prices for phones.

Russian search giant Yandex demands antitrust action against Google because of Android search

Yandex isn’t fighting over Google’s scraps in Russia as many search providers are around the world. Yandex owns the majority of the search market in Russia, but its share recently fell below 60 percent. That’s cause for concern from where Yandex sits, so is it time to change up the business? Compete harder? Nope, get regulators to hassle Google.As Google’s influence over technology continues to grow, so do the calls from competitors for regulatory agencies to slam on the brakes. Such is the case in Russia where a competing search company has filed a complaint with Russia’s anti-monopoly regulator to investigate the way Google manages Android. It’s not some small-scale nobody competitor, though, this is Yandex — Russia’s largest search provider. Yandex claims the way Google integrates its search services in Android is anti-competitive, but it really just sounds like Yandex wants to have its cake and eat it too.