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W3 search engines | What else, if not Google ?
Who could compete with Google in its core business of advertising and W3 search? In the race are Microsoft, a Russian conglomerate and a privacy-friendly alternative.
The US Department of Justice has accused Google of having a monopoly as a search engine in the US and of abusing this position. The search engine is the basis and core of Google's market power. In the US, the group is said to have an 88% market share in this area.
A central allegation of the antitrust lawsuit : Google's parent company Alphabet is said to have ensured, through deals with companies such as Samsung and Apple, that Google is always suggested as the default search engine on smartphones and in browsers. Which user then clicks his way through to another search engine? Can you remember the last time you used Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo?
These three names are the only ones mentioned in the 64-page complaint as competitors in the US search engine market. A look at Google's alternatives and a company from the Russian region shows how far Google has fallen behind its competitors, how Google's power has grown so much and the dilemma facing the alternatives.
Microsoft's Bing is the most used search engine in the world after Google. However, it does not represent real competition for Google - its share of the US market is only around seven percent according to the complaint. The antitrust charges of the US Department of Justice relate only to the US market. But a tough action against Google in the US could also have consequences for Europe and the rest of the world. A search at Bing looks hardly any different than at Google. For example, if you search for recipes, you get matching results with an image preview, just like with Google. If you search for craft instructions, you will often get a short summary in an info box, just like with Google.
Bing could at least keep up a bit with one of Google's key competitive advantages: Like Google with a Google account, users can log in to Bing with their Microsoft account. Bing is thus connected to Microsoft's office services, such as Word and Excel, the cloud storage service OneDrive and the video telephony service Teams. However, these services are far from being as tightly integrated and numerous as in the Google ecosystem.
Microsoft cannot achieve a lock-in effect, where all computer use consists almost entirely of services provided by one company. Moreover, unlike Google's online alternatives, Word and Excel, for example, are not free.
If Microsoft had won the bid for the TikTok social media service, the group would have been able to retain its users much better. The company would then have had a successful social network in its portfolio - something that Google never managed to do. But the Trump government apparently has other preferences for the future of TikTok.
Microsoft, through Bing, is also active in the lucrative market for search engine advertising and, like Google, offers personalised advertising via cookies. Customers can use the Microsoft Advertising Program to place ads that are automatically displayed on Bing, but also on other Microsoft services such as MSN. Although the number of people reached by the programme is significantly lower, the company claims that the advantage over Google advertising is that a more lucrative, more affluent target group is reached.
However, Bing's technology is not only used in Microsoft's search engine itself. Bing also provides the results that are displayed in the search engines Yahoo, Ecosia and the English version of the Chinese search engine Baidu. If you add up the market shares of Bing and Yahoo!, they are still under ten percent in the USA according to the analysis service "Statcounter" - worldwide even under five percent. Ecosia is a German company. The Berlin-based company advertises its contribution to environmental protection by allocating 80 per cent of its advertising revenues to reforestation projects. According to its own figures, Ecosia has almost ten million users.
DuckDuckGo is a search engine founded in 2008 from the small town of Paoli in the US state of Pennsylvania. The company has 111 employees and advertises with a comparatively privacy-friendly approach: DuckDuckGo does not store IP addresses, cookies (except for changed settings) or other data that could be used to identify users. There is no log-in as with Google's services.
DuckDuckGo has less than two percent market share in the US, according to the US Department of Justice's lawsuit against Google. DuckDuckGo is also finding it difficult to gain a foothold in Europe. DuckDuckGo is critical of Google: the auctions in which Google auctions off places for alternative search engines, which are available as standard searches when setting up a new Android device, are fundamentally flawed. Probably also because the provider was not very successful at the last auction.
According to its own figures, DuckDuckGo processes more than two billion search queries a month, which according to figures from W3 Live Stats is significantly less than Google gets a day. The search results come from various sources, including Bing, Yandex, Wolfram Alpha, its own web crawler and, more recently, Apple Maps.
Despite the data protection-friendly approach, DuckDuckGo does advertise. However, advertisers do not buy ads directly from the company, but from Microsoft Advertising. Microsoft then distributes the ads in its Search Network, i.e. Bing, Yahoo and other partners such as DuckDuckGo. According to DuckDuckGo, the advertisements are limited to the respective search term alone, no specific targeting is offered.
Users can certainly notice differences between pure text searches and the results of a Google search, although DuckDuckGo is much less suitable for researching media reports. A standard search for videos only produces results for Google's video service YouTube, not even Google itself. The route planning for drivers and pedestrians introduced in October 2020 is based on Apple Maps.
Although the large Russian technology group Yandex has so far played no role in the US market, it has maintained its market leadership in Russia and large parts of the post-Soviet region for decades ahead of Google. Unlike DuckDuckGo and Bing, Yandex also has its own technology to compete with Google on a broad front.
Like the US corporation, the Russians started early to build an ecosystem around their search engine with numerous complementary services: In maps and traffic navigation, Yandex was already way ahead of Google in Russia ten years ago. The traffic jam detector Yandex.Probka became an important tool for millions of Russian motorists. In addition, there is Yandex.Mail, the cloud service Yandex.Disk, a picture reverse search that is sometimes even superior to Google, browsers, translation service, a very popular driving service, a food delivery service and a news aggregator that reaches more Russians every day than the large state TV stations.
This is also the reason why the Kremlin has taken a tight rein on the W3 company in recent years. Parts of the founding team were regarded as rather liberal, and during large demonstrations against Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2011 and 2012 the company showed sympathy with the movement. The president retaliated with tips that Yandex was obviously controlled by foreigners. Although this was a lie, it was also a clear warning. In the meantime, reports by some media critical of the Kremlin no longer appear on Yandex News.
As strong as Yandex's position in the post-Soviet region is, its successes are also small: the widely announced Yandex launch in Turkey was rather slow, and the search engine has a market share of just 14 percent. The promised launch in Germany was never realised.
Conclusion : It seems unlikely that the US Department of Justice will weaken Google so that a competitor moving ever closer to the Kremlin can step in.
22-Oct 2020
The end of the year 2020 is approaching | Who is doing the dog race ?
22-Oct 2020
Has the CUPS development fallen asleep ?
The Common Unix Printing System, which is mainly maintained by Apple, takes care of the printing on Linux and Mac systems. However, since CUPS inventor Michael Sweet left Apple in December, the further development of CUPS has largely come to a standstill.
The last version of CUPS was released in April 2020 and only corrected two errors. The last major changes were made in December 2019 - just before the main developer Michael Sweet left Apple. His departure impressively demonstrates that most of the work was done by him. Sweet had moved to Apple in 2007. At that time, the company had purchased the source code of CUPS, maintained the licensing under the GPL and engaged Sweet for further development.
It is not known at present whether this standstill will change. The internet portal Phoronix believes it is possible that Apple will continue to develop the source code internally.
20-Oct 2020
General information on Adobe Flash Player product support
As announced in July 2017, Adobe will cease distributing and updating Flash Player on 31.12.2020. The announcement was made jointly with Adobe's technology partners, including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. These partners have also released announcements with additional technical details that address the impact of Flash Player product discontinuance on developers, businesses and end users across operating systems and browsers.
Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have been continuously developed over the last few years and offer good alternatives for Flash content. Furthermore, well-known browser vendors have embedded these open standards in their browsers and disabled most other plug-ins (such as Adobe Flash Player). The publication of Adobe's decision to discontinue the product in 2017, three years before it was discontinued, gave developers, designers, businesses and other stakeholders time to migrate existing Flash content to the new open standards.
After product discontinuation, the Flash Player download pages are removed from the Adobe website and execution of Flash-based content in Adobe Flash Player is blocked. Adobe always recommends using the latest and most up-to-date software versions. Customers should not use Flash Player after product discontinuation as Adobe no longer supports it.
Can I use Flash Player if I find a download option on a third-party website ?
No. These versions of Flash Player are not authorised by Adobe. Customers should not use unauthorised versions of Flash Player. Unauthorised downloads are the most common cause of malware and viruses. Adobe is not responsible for unauthorised versions of Flash Player. Customers use such versions exclusively at their own risk.
17-Oct 2020
A letter to Apache OpenOffice
The directors of the Document Foundation (TDF), the organisation of LibreOffice development, has sent a letter to Apache OpenOffice on the twentieth anniversary of the OpenOffice code release. In it the signatories see LibreOffice as the future of OpenOffice and plead to combine all forces and stand behind this goal.
Despite all this, according to TDF, many users are unaware of the existence of LibreOffice. This is because OpenOffice is still so strong as a brand, although there is hardly any development or support left. It would be perfectly okay if OpenOffice continued to maintain the 4.1 branch from 2014 for existing users.
But the most responsible thing to do in 2020 is to point out to new users that there is a much more modern, up-to-date, professionally supported suite, based on OpenOffice and with many additional features.
OpenOffice.org, as the project was initially called, emerged from the commercial StarOffice in 2000, after its source code had been released. The development took place mainly at Sun Microsystems. After Oracle had incorporated Sun, the development was neglected and the decline began. In 2010, dissatisfaction with the situation led to the spin-off LibreOffice. In 2011, Oracle handed over OpenOffice.org including the rights to the name to the Apache Software Foundation.
16-Oct 2020
AppleBot ?
Since a few weeks my web server gets visits from several AppleBots.
Is Apple planning to build its own search engine ?
17-58-96-236.applebot.apple.com - - ... "GET ...
(Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)
17-58-96-228.applebot.apple.com - - ... "GET ...
(Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)
Apple plans to introduce its own search engine, to compete with Google ? There are a number of indicators suggesting that the Cupertino-based tech giant company may be planning for its own search engine.
Google spends billions of dollars to maintain as the default search engine for all Apple devices such as the iPhone, MacBooks, and the iPad on its Safari browser. This means the search results would be collected from Google while you check on the W3. Although users may adjust the search settings by default.
It seems, though, that this arrangement will come to an end, as Apple plans to develop its own web-based search engine to compete with Google.
15-Oct 2020
GIMP 2.10.22 : Maintenance release with new features for file formats
A few days ago a new version of the free image editing software GIMP 2.10.22 was released. The developers emphasize in their announcement that this is a maintenance release. According to the version number it is, but the new version also offers new functionality.
GIMP 2.10.22 supports AV1 and AVIF. These include support for the AV1 compression algorithm and its conversion to AV1-based AVIF, an image format specified in February 2019, which is a variant of the HEIF container file format.
Improvements in file formats : This allows GIMP 2.10.22 to import and export HEIF files, which may contain both AVIF and HEIC formats, in 10-bit and 12-bit depth per channel. Improvements have also been made to the multilayer support for the TIFF graphics format. A new policy removes the Exif tag orientation for image alignment. This means that what can be seen as orientation in GIMP is the same as what can be seen in other applications after export. Also the plugin for reading the PSP file format of the image editing software PaintShop Pro has been improved in GIMP 2.10.22.
GIMP 3 is getting closer. Meanwhile, the developers continue to work on the next major release, GIMP 3.0, which will bring extensive changes. The most fundamental change is the change of the toolkit from GTK 2 to GTK 3. The plugin interface has been designed object-oriented and plugin settings will be preserved beyond a restart of GIMP. Python 2 is no longer supported with GIMP 3.0. Other new features include support for multi-layered selections, better support for smaller screens, Python 3 support for most plugins, better wayland support and an enhanced editor for input devices.
11-Oct 2020
Debian GNU/Linux 10.6 Buster released
About two months after Debian 10.5, the project has released the sixth point release of the currently stable edition of the distribution, Debian GNU/Linux 10.6 Buster. Point-releases receive updated images and help newcomers to install Debian with the current package inventory.
32 vulnerabilities closed : For existing users who do not update as frequently, it is an indication that it is time to update the system. Because in addition to 53 bug fixes, the developers have also closed 32 security vulnerabilities for Debian 10.6. Otherwise no packages were removed from the distribution during this run. Debian 10.6 is altogether a rather small point release. Some packages for the armel architecture are still pending due to bugs in the build process and will be delivered later.
Kernel upgraded to 4.19.146-1 : the bug fixes usually include adjustments for serious problems in applications. These bug fixes are only made in point releases when no regressions are expected. For Debian 10.6, among other things, the kernel was raised to 4.19.146-1, the kernel ABI was set to 11 and the installer was updated.
30-Sep 2020
Shodan and Censys, the two search engines for the W3 of Things, are capable of wreaking havoc in various ways.
Look around - we live in the W3 of things. In our everyday lives, we deal with devices connected to the W3 - from our home Wi-Fi routers to traffic light control systems and surveillance cameras. All these networked things are found in two worlds: the real world and the virtual online world.
And just as Google helps you find information on the world wide web (W3), there are other search engines, especially for finding networked devices. Welcome ... Shodan and Censys!
Shodan is the first (and presumably primary) search engine for the W3 of Things - and has been for more than 7 years. It was named after the antagonist from the computer game series System Shock - an extremely vile artificial intelligence called "Shodan". The real Shodan is not quite as relentless, but nonetheless it too is capable of causing damage. But before we get to the bad news, let's first explain how Shodan works.
Shodan can be imagined like someone walking through the city and ringing all the front doors off. Only it's not about doors, but about IPv4 addresses, and not about a city, but about the whole world.
If you ask Shodan about a certain type of door or about all doors in a certain part of the city, you will certainly get information about: how many doors are there, who opens them and what do the residents say. Shodan gives all this information about the devices on the W3 of Things: what are they called, what type they belong to, and is there a web interface that can be used. The service is not free; to use Shodan, registration is required, but it is relatively inexpensive.
In itself, there is nothing wrong with ringing doors - unless it turns out that there are a lot of doors without locks and nobody to prevent criminals from breaking in. In the world of the W3 of Things, these doors are unprotected routers, IP cameras and other devices that use standard access data. Once you access the web interface and find out the credentials, you have full control over the device. And it's not magic, because the information about standard credentials for networked devices is usually found on the manufacturer's website on the W3.
If it is an IP camera, you can see everything the camera records and - if this feature is supported - even control it. If it is a baby phone, you can speak to the poor baby with a scary voice. That depends entirely on your moral concept.
But there are also quite other things that can be found about Shodan - such as an unprotected X-ray machine whose images you can view.
It is interesting to explore Shodan and many users go on a voyage of discovery out of pure curiosity. Some come across the control system of an adventure pool or a nuclear power plant. Let's also add car washes, heat pumps, ATMs and just about everything else networked to the list.
While an insecure IP camera can only endanger privacy, other insecure networked devices, such as the aforementioned system control of an adventure pool or the on-board system of a train, pose an immensely high security risk: If they fall into the hands of unauthorised persons and are controlled by them, a disaster of terrible proportions can result. For this reason, manufacturers and system administrators of such critical infrastructures must be extremely careful with regard to the IT security of these networked devices.
For a long time, Shodan was the only search engine for the W3 of Things. Then in 2013, rival Censys appeared, which, unlike Shodan, is free. It is also a search engine for the W3 of Things; it is based on the same principles, but - according to the developers of Censys - is more precise when it comes to detecting security vulnerabilities. Yes, right: Censys can list devices according to specific security vulnerabilities, such as the Heartbleed Bug.
Censys was developed by a research group at the University of Michigan with the goal of making the W3 safer. Strictly speaking, both Shodan and Censys were created in connection with security research, but as interest grows, so does the number of those with anything less than good intentions.
It can be assumed that neither Shodan nor Censys are used by serious cyber criminals. Professional hackers have long used botnets that serve the same purpose, but are more powerful. It took Shodan's developer John Matherly only 5 hours to capture all the devices across the internet and a botnet of hundreds of computers would most likely take even less time to do so.
Censys was developed by a research group at the University of Michigan with the goal of making the W3 safer. Strictly speaking, both Shodan and Censys were created in connection with security research, but as interest grows, so does the number of those with anything less than good intentions.
30-Sep 2020
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