Google is being sued by the Christian Institute in the UK for denying the group’s advertisement. The group wanted to place an ad on the keyword “abortion”, but apparently Google’s current policy “does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain ‘abortion and religion-related content’.” The Christian Institute is claiming that Google is violating the Equality Act 2006 by discriminating against religious groups.
The ad itself doesn’t seem to be offensive or deceptive. It would have read: “UK abortion law – news and views on abortion from the Christian Institute. www.christian.org.uk”
This seems odd to me based on Google’s usually unbiased policies. It usually prides itself on being a service provider and being indifferent to the content it’s providing. Granted, this is an advertisement as opposed to a search result, but it still strikes me as a little odd, especially since the policy is so sweeping (‘abortion and religion-related content’ – no requirement for it to be offensive or deceptive at all).
Does this policy make any sense? What if it were the other way around?
Google is being sued by the Christian Institute in the UK for denying the group’s advertisement. The group wanted to place an ad on the keyword “abortion”, but apparently Google’s...
Google Talk launched a new service today called chatback (found via Garett). It enables Google Talk users to post a badge to their website or blog, which allows visitors to open a conversation with them. Visitors need not have a Google Talk account, and all badges can be disabled in one click. The conversation opens in the Google Talk gadget – a web-based client. Visitors can see your status in the badge; if you set it to busy, then they won’t be able to disturb you.
Check out my badge. It’s posted below (if it doesn’t appear, it’s also on my contact page).
Google Talk launched a new service today called chatback (found via Garett). It enables Google Talk users to post a badge to their website or blog, which allows visitors to...
Did you know that when you’re viewing mail in your Gmail account you’re not using a secure connection by default? That means that anyone who’s sniffing traffic on your network can intercept your packets and essentially read your email or, worse yet, steal your session (ie. login to Gmail as you)!
The chances of this actually happening to you are very slim. But Google actually offers HTTPS (ie. encrypted) access to Gmail, so why not take advantage of it? To use HTTPS, you just need to change the “http://” in the address bar to “https://” once you’re logged in and hit enter.
You need to do this ever time to log into Gmail though, which is a bit annoying. That’s why I’ve begun using the GMailSecure script for Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on which allows you to install scripts that customize websites for you. This script simply replaces “http://” with “https://” for you whenever you’re logged into Gmail.
For any security conscious Firefox+Gmail users out there, this add-on ensures that you’re always viewing your email over a secure connection.
Did you know that when you’re viewing mail in your Gmail account you’re not using a secure connection by default? That means that anyone who’s sniffing traffic on your network...
Yesterday, Google released a (beta) version of Google Desktop for Linux. Check out their blog for the announcement! It includes indexing for PDF, PS, text files and source code, HTML, OpenOffice documents, Thunderbird email, Gmail, web history, man pages, images, music, and it also includes the Quick Search box. It doesn’t (yet) include the sidebar or support for any gadgets.
Screenshot from Google:
This is hopefully the first of many “significant accomplishments/releases” for Linux this year from Google, according to their presentation at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit a couple weeks back, which was actually hosted at Google’s Mountain View Campus. Google already has official Linux versions of some of it’s popular applications, such as Google Earth and Google Picasa (though Picasa uses WINE).
Here’s to hoping that Google Talk is next!
On a side note, Google Docs & Spreadsheets also recently unveiled new changes to their user interface, which also benefit Linux in the sense that it is a web-based (i.e. cross-platform) option for basic office applications.
Yesterday, Google released a (beta) version of Google Desktop for Linux. Check out their blog for the announcement! It includes indexing for PDF, PS, text files and source code, HTML,...
