Ian Lin / Bing:
Make a Good Search Impression with Bing's Linked Pages  —  Whether it's an old friend, a former classmate or (ahem) yourself, searching for people is one of the most common things we do on the web.  Last year, we took the first step to bring expanded search results of your Facebook friends into Bing …

The news alert from the Wall St. Journal hit my phone about an hour ago, pulling me away from tasting “Texas Bourbon” in San Antonio to sit down and grok this headline: Google’s iPhone Tracking.

Now, the headline certainly is attention-grabbing, but the news alert email had a more sinister headline: “Google Circumvented Web-Privacy Safeguards.”

Wow! What’s going on here?

Turns out, no one looks good in this story, but certainly the Journal feels like they’ve got Google in a “gotcha” moment. As usual, I think there’s a lot more to the story, and while I’m Thinking Out Loud right now, and pretty sure there’s a lot more than I can currently grok, there’s something I just gotta say.

First, the details.  Here’s the lead in the Journal’s story, which requires a login/registration:

“Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.”

Now, from what I can tell, the first part of that story is true – Google and many others have figured out ways to get around Apple’s default settings on Safari in iOS – the only browser that comes with iOS, a browser that, in my experience, has never asked me what kind of privacy settings I wanted, nor did it ask if I wanted to share my data with anyone else (I do, it turns out, for any number of perfectly good reasons). Apple assumes that I agree with Apple’s point of view on “privacy,” which, I must say, is ridiculous on its face, because the idea of a large corporation (Apple is the largest, in fact) determining in advance what I might want to do with my data is pretty much the opposite of “privacy.”

Then again, Apple decided I hated Flash, too, so I shouldn’t be that surprised, right?

But to the point, Google circumvented Safari’s default settings by using some trickery described in this WSJ blog post, which reports the main reason Google did what it did was so that it could know if a user was a Google+ member, and if so (or even if not so), it could show that user Google+ enhanced ads via AdSense.

In short, Apple’s mobile version of Safari broke with common web practice,  and as a result, it broke Google’s normal approach to engaging with consumers. Was Google’s “normal approach” wrong? Well, I suppose that’s a debate worth having – it’s currently standard practice and the backbone of the entire web advertising ecosystem –  but the Journal doesn’t bother to go into those details. One can debate whether setting cookies should happen by default – but the fact is, that’s how it’s done on the open web.

The Journal article does later acknowledge, though not in a way that a reasonable reader would interpret as meaningful, that the mobile version of Safari has “default” (ie not user activated) settings that prevent Google and others (like ad giant WPP) to track user behavior the way they do on the “normal” Web. That’s a far cry from the Journal’s lead paragraph, which again, states Google bypassed the “the privacy settings of millions of people.” So when is a privacy setting really a privacy setting, I wonder? When Apple makes it so?

Since this story has broken, Google has discontinued its practice, making it look even worse, of course.

But let’s step back a second here and ask: why do you think Apple has made it impossible for advertising-driven companies like Google to execute what are industry standard practices on the open web (dropping cookies and tracking behavior so as to provide relevant services and advertising)? Do you think it’s because Apple cares deeply about your privacy?

Really?

Or perhaps it’s because Apple considers anyone using iOS, even if they’re browsing the web, as “Apple’s customer,” and wants to throttle potential competitors, insuring that it’s impossible to access to “Apple’s” audiences using iOS in any sophisticated fashion? Might it be possible that Apple is using data as its weapon, dressed up in the PR friendly clothing of  ”privacy protection” for users?

That’s at least a credible idea, I’d argue.

I don’t know, but when I bought an iPhone, I didn’t think I was singing up as an active recruit in Apple’s war on the open web. I just thought I was getting “the Internet in my pocket” – which was Apple’s initial marketing pitch for the device. What I didn’t realize was that it was “the Internet, as Apple wishes to understand it, in my pocket.”

It’d be nice if the Journal wasn’t so caught up in its own “privacy scoop” that it paused to wonder if perhaps Apple has an agenda here as well. I’m not arguing Google doesn’t have an agenda – it clearly does. I’m as saddened as the next guy about how Google has broken search in its relentless pursuit of beating Facebook, among others.

In this case, what Google and others have done sure sounds wrong – if you’ve going to resort to tricking a browser into offering up information designated by default as private, you need to somehow message the user and explain what’s going on. Then again, in the open web, you don’t have to – most browsers let you set cookies by default. In iOS within Safari, perhaps such messaging is technically impossible, I don’t know. But these shenanigans are predictable, given the dynamic of the current food fight between Google, Apple, Facebook, and others. It’s one more example of the sad state of the Internet given the war between the Internet Big Five. And it’s only going to get worse, before, I hope, it gets better again.

Now, here’s my caveat: I haven’t been able to do any reporting on this, given it’s 11 pm in Texas and I’ve got meetings in the morning. But I’m sure curious as to the real story here. I don’t think the sensational headlines from the Journal get to the core of it. I’ll depend on you, fair readers, to enlighten us all on what you think is really going on.

Tesla Roadsters lined up outside of the Model S Beta Customer event

Blogger and entrepreneur Michael DeGusta wrote a long piece on his blog The Understatement on Tuesday about several Tesla Roadsters that have been left without a charge for an extended period of time (weeks and months) and have turned into “bricks,” or basically have completely discharged their batteries and destroyed them. I haven’t confirmed the details behind this story — like the length of time that the batteries were left uncharged, or how Tesla has dealt with these potential problems — but it is true that after a really long period of time without a charge early Tesla Roadster batteries can go dead.

Tesla tells me that:

All automobiles require some level of owner care. For example, combustion vehicles require regular oil changes or the engine will be destroyed. Electric vehicles should be plugged in and charging when not in use for maximum performance. All batteries are subject to damage if the charge is kept at zero for long periods of time. However,  Tesla avoids this problem in virtually all instances with numerous counter-measures. Tesla batteries can remain unplugged for weeks (even months), without reaching zero state of charge. Owners of Roadster 2.0 and all subsequent Tesla products can request that their vehicle alert Tesla if SOC falls to a low level. All Tesla vehicles emit various visual and audible warnings if the battery pack falls below 5 percent SOC. Tesla provides extensive maintenance recommendations as part of the customer experience.

Tesla’s Roadster was the first electric sports car on the market and the company learned quite a bit from those early cars. What will be most important is using those learnings for the Model S, its second car, an electric sedan, that will start shipping this Summer. Electric car owners are also learning how to take proper care of their cars, given the very early market.

Tesla’s stock was briefly down in morning trading but is moving back up.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• A 2011 Green IT Forecast
• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy

Voice-over-Wi-Fi pioneer Kineto Wireless is trying to convince operators that if they can’t beat the over-the-top VoIP challengers like Skype, they might as well join them. Kineto is now selling a VoIP client and platform to operators that would allow them to bypass their own voice networks and offer their own cheap IP telephony services over Wi-Fi, LTE and even 3G.

Operators like AT&T have already started exploring such offerings. In November it began offering a smartphone app called Call International, that allows customers to make cheap overseas calls. Verizon partnered with its biggest OTT threat, Skype, in hopes of attracting more customers to its data plans (though the service oddly uses its CDMA circuit-switched voice network).

But in both those cases, operators put limits on how the services could be used so customers simply couldn’t move all of their voice minutes over to unlimited or big-bucket data plans. Kineto VP of marketing Steve Shaw said there is still plenty of opportunity for operators to test the boundaries of a OTT services without threatening their traditional voice revenues. In fact, operators have done it once before, he said in an email interview:

To some extent, it’s a little like the calling card phenomenon in the fixed line market 10+ years ago. At the time, it cost quite a bit to make international calls from a fixed line at home. “Over the top” calling cards providers offered a way for people to access their service (via the [plain old telephone service] line) to get cheaper international calls.

In response, the [Bell operating companies]/incumbents could have simply lowered their rates, but instead decided to offer their own calling card service.

People who are price-insensitive or not tech savvy will continue to pay full fare. But for those who are willing to jump through a couple hoops, an over-the-top VoIP app from their own operator may offer a nicely integrated solution with better prices.

By that logic, embracing OTT in half measures may be a way for operators to stave off pricing pressures from VoIP competitors. Rather than lower all of their rates, they just target the segments of their customer base that are jumping ship to lower-priced platforms.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

Ghostery is your window into the invisible web – tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.

Available as extensions for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, Ghostery also lets you block the trackers it finds, and view the source of suspect scripts. Running it is quite an eye-opener, to say the least.

Really cool to see what websites are really running on your computer!

Read More