Google security under fire

Betting on the Web as a platform may be the chief gamble of our current computing era, one that requires a significant amount of hedging, most notably in terms of security surrounding services offered as cloudware; but when you are Google, betting on the Web is more than a business strategy: It is a never-ending font for rhetorical marketing hype.

"When Zoho adopted Gears, we cheered," said Vic Gundotra -- vice president of engineering at Google, and former general manager of platform evangelism at Microsoft -- at a dinner preceding the company's Campfire One announcement of OpenSocial, an intriguing albeit hustled-into-the-headlines response to Microsoft's bet on Facebook's social networking platform and API.

Here was not a story of Zoho pitting Google's technology against the search giant's hope of diminishing the functionality gap between its Google Apps online productivity suite and Zoho Office. Here instead was a story of The Web Company generating worthwhile waves for the little guys to ride for a time.

But are such instances truly a matter of rising tides, or are they the tell-tale signs of a bloating multinational just now suffering the spoils of competing interdepartmental agendas and internal communication problems?

Externally, Google's message will be clear in 2008: When the Web wins, Google wins. And you, Web user, should feel good about it.

But if the Web as font of all-solving creativity can be claimed by one company, what of the nefarious underbelly growing unabated alongside?

That, of course, will be the task ahead for Google's newly assembled "advocacy" team, a grassroots-vibe spin on the previous pulpit-and-oracle "evangelism" mission of the 90s, one that incorporates -- or implicates -- you in the overall understanding that, without a resilient Web generations hence, how can our children possibly survive?

And the advocacy team has its work cut out for it, as malware exploits will surely continue to thrive.

Witness the minor storm accreting around Google security the past few days, as bugs, flaws, and worms have made headlines against Gmail, Google Toolbar, and Orkut -- Google's social networking site.

Of course, the Gmail snafu, which allows hackers to hijack and access Gmail accounts, finds its seeds in Internet Explorer, the latest patch of which has produced its share of unrelated headaches as of late.

And the potential for Google Toolbar becoming a bank-busting platform for phishing scams is low, given the elaborate hoops users must step through to fall for phishing scam Toolbar button installations.

And as for the Orkut scrapbook worm who outside of India and Brazil and the Web 2.0 crowd has even heard of Orkut anyway?

Press like this can't help assuage ongoing business fears regarding Google service adoption beyond the SMB, nonprofit, departmental level -- an aspiration Google remains cagey about, if only to side-step questions regarding its ability to deliver the kind of service large organizations expect from software and systems investments.

InfoWorld security reporter Matt Hines visited Google recently in an effort to ascertain Google's security designs. The upshot is that Postini and GreenBorder will provide the foundation, and though Google has stated that recent Postini layoffs are part of a reallocation of resources, whether that effort and reallocation will bear fruit remains to be seen.

In the meantime, Google's ability to get businesses to bite on its future foray into security services may hinge on more than just shoring up the security of its consumer plays. It may depend as much on rejiggering its message away from the Web as brand.

Posted by Jason Snyder on December 19, 2007 12:33 PM
http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/015257.html?source=NLC-TECHWATCH&cgd=2007-12-26