webrampage

Yeah well I was just going through Gmail’s TOS and I found something fishy. Something not so friendly. Something that freaked me out.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

I’m not a lawyer, but what I understood after reading this a few times is that you basically give Google the permission to mess with your emails. They can do whatever they want. No privacy! I don’t know what else to say. I feel like Google’s little bitch.

I knew that Google had a lot of privacy issues, but woah… this is like taking it to the next level. I’m a bit shocked to be honest. I never thought they would have this in their TOS. Smart corporate bastards! Now we can’t take any legal actions. They’ll just say that we agreed to it.

This reminds me of the rumours about Google thinking of displaying people’s emails in their search results because they thought it could help other people (for some weird reason). I hope Google doesn’t do that. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it.

The thing that I pointed out in Gmail’s TOS was the same issue with Google Chrome’s TOS. There was a lot of complaining and warnings about it. People were fucking pissed. They wouldn’t even download Chrome because of that. Google came out and told us that it was a mistake. I’ll just quote what Gizmodo said, “Google knew it was in there and hoped it would slide.”

And you know what? The TOS for Gmail is actually the TOS for Google. They use the same thing for all their shit. So, doesn’t that mean we’re completely fucked? They just know way too much stuff about us and now they can do whatever they want with those info. Kinda creepy since Google isn’t as innocent as it pretends to be.

Well I don’t know what you guys are thinking, but I’ll stop using Gmail. Well actually I don’t really use Gmail anymore. I just use it to chat with a few people who doesn’t use Live Messenger (aka MSN). But, I would really appreciate if you shared how you feel about this and what you’ll be doing.

The question used to be, can Cuil beat Google? Now its more like can it actually compete with Google?

Everyone was so excited about Cuil. They got a massive traffic. But, they fucked it up! To be honest, they just went public too soon. It should be more like private beta (if not alpha) right now. Having a nice design, a good privacy policy and a huge index doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful.

Its funny how people change their mind on something. People were talking good about Cuil and the next day, they start hating on it. I tried to support Cuil. I thought they would improve over the next few weeks (or maybe months). But, I’m not too sure if that’s going to happen.

Their search results are getting worse everyday. Last time, I searched for “webrampage” on Cuil I got some pretty decent results. Now I don’t even get that. All the results are completely irrelevant and they even included spam sites. They even repeated the same site five different times. Just take a look and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

You go to a new restaurant and the food there is just horrible. Do you think you’ll ever go back there? What if your friends tell you that the food has improved? Right now, Cuil is like that restaurant. Its hard to fix something when you look like an epic failure.

I’m not sure if people will ever give Cuil another shot. Some people might. But, most of them probably couldn’t care less. Well Cuil needs to work their ass off before they can think of that day. I still can’t believe that they went live so early. Where they high or something? And I thought I made bad decisions.

Oh wait. I didn’t answer the question, “Can they compete with Google?”. Do I really need to? Can they even compete with Ask.com?

Well I’ve said enough about Cuil today. Now its your turn to share what you think. Do you think Cuil can compete with the big guys? Will you ever give it another shot? Or do you think Cuil is just an epic failure?

Photo credit: Jacob Wackerhausen

Oh look what I found. Google’s CAPTCHA doesn’t work properly. Wait. Do you think I’m joking? Do you? Well I’m gonna prove it!

Okay head over to www.google.com/addurl and enter a random URL. But, don’t enter the CAPTCHA correctly. Just type something random there. What do you get? Well I get this message:

Thank you

Your site URL has been successfully added to our list of URLs to crawl. Please note that we do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

Can they not afford a decent programmer? Damn! What kind of lazy (and dumb) bastards are they hiring? See that’s why you shouldn’t treat your employees like a king. Don’t give them toys, free food and other luxuries. Make them work their ass off!

I’m sure this is how the conversation about the CAPTCHA over at Google went:

Manager (or whatever they call the guy): Are the captures working?

Programmer: Yes they are. I just finished making them yesterday. They are the best CAPTCHAs on the web.

Manager: Good! Google must have the best of everything! May I test it?

Programmer: Sure. Just enter the letters you see in the picture.

Manager: Good. It works perfect. You can go play with everyone now.

Dude you gotta try it the other way too! Enter a wrong CAPTCHA. Oh man, this is just hilarious. Well Google I work freelance and I’m free right now. Feel free to drop me an email. I can fix that for you guys. Ha! You wish. I was joking. I’m not helping you guys.

Okay spammers its your time to have some fun with the big G. Big G? What’s it stand for again? Gangsta? More like ghetto right now. Oh well. Let me know if you did anything big.

Update: I just tried to contact Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam by commenting on his blog. I just wanted to tell him about this and I found something interesting (once again!). Mr Cutts has built is own custom spam protection. It asked me what the sum of 10 + 6 and I entered 16. It said I was wrong. (Hmm the head of spam can’t build a working spam protection.)

Update again: Okay the spam protection finally worked and I could leave the comment on his blog. Well he deleted my comment. I guess he was too ashamed of his and Google’s epic failure at making a simple CAPTCHA.

Update #3: Matt Cutts is saying that they do this on purpose. But, when I asked him why they do this he didn’t have an answer. Very convincing I must say. I wonder if he’s just saying because he doesn’t want him and Google to look like a total loser. Hmm?

Sorry don’t mean to ruin it for them, but there are bots that can read and enter CAPTCHAs. So, people who make a mistake while entering the CAPTCHA is considered a bot? And their submission is just thrown away? And the bots that can correctly enter the CAPTCHA gets added to the list? What a brilliant idea!

I wonder if I’ll find the CAPTCHA working correctly if I go there next week (or when we all forget about this). I’m thinking yes.

Update #4: This was submitted to Digg and it was going pretty good. It was second in Industry New’s upcoming with most diggs. But, suddenly it just went poof! It got buried. How is that possible? Just like that? And it was only 1 bury that buried the whole story. Was it by a moderator?

Do you think Google contacted Digg and told them to make sure that this doesn’t go front page? Or is this some kind of Digg censorship? I’ve heard stories of Digg censoring things out. Oh and Google is also dropping me from SERPs. Do a Google search for webrampage and you’ll see. Coincidence?