Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) said on Dec. 30 that it has nothing to do with the alleged censorship in China.

Recently, reports emerged that Google’s popular Gmail service has been blocked in China. For years traffic to Google’s search engine has been severely throttled as the search engine giant refuses to work with the Chinese government. Google’s YouTube has been outright blocked in China since 2009.

“We have checked, and there is nothing wrong on our end,” a Singapore-based spokesman for Google said.

Google’s own Transparency Report, which shows real-time traffic to Google services, displayed a sharp drop-off in traffic to Gmail from China on Dec. 26.

The spokesman’s remarks were referred to the fact that by Google’s “transparency report,” which shows real-time traffic to Google services, displayed a sharp drop-off in traffic to Gmail from China on Dec. 26, while Gmail users discovered that they could not receive or sent any email messages in and out from China.

Hua Chunying (華春瑩), spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said on Dec. 29 that she has not idea what happened to Gmail and suggested the press to go for further explanation or comments from related government departments or Google.

On Dec. 30, an editorial in Global Times, a state-run newspaper in China, said that if the Chinese government actually censored Gmail, users will have to live with it anyway.

The editorial said that “we need to believe that the government will not do something that does not make any sense.” It also urged Google users to “let it go.”

The article said that the Chinese government has been requesting Google to follow related laws in China while Google insisted its own policy and hoped not to be restricted by China’s laws.

“Gmail’s censorship could be China’s work, could be Google’s problem, and could be the result of a ‘multiple reason,’” the editorial said. “The government must have discovered something that may jeopardize national security if this was them.

If that is the case, the editorial said, Chinese users should accept the fact the Gmail is censored in China.

Chinese Google withdrew from China in 2010 but Gmail began to have more and more users instead.

The Chinese government, however, never stopped its interruption again Gmail users. The last interruption, for example, took place prior to the 25^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, that many Chinese Gmail users could not log in to their own accounts.

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Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)  has launched its latest mobile effort, Inbox, which promises to turn email into a better productivity tool. Being on a limited invitation-only scheme, Google is set to duplicate its earlier marketing scheme when Gmail originally launched, creating much demand for a supposedly scarce product. With some of Inbox’s features already present in certain mobile apps like Dropbox’s Mailbox, however, will Inbox live up to the hype and change email communication for the better?

When Google launched its Gmail service to the public in 2004, the company promised to reinvent how Internet users emailed. Instead of the usual one-message view that email users have grown accustomed to, Gmail defaulted to a threaded/conversation view. This resulted in a learning curve for some, although with its invitation-only beta scheme, artificial demand had been created, and users sought Gmail as an object of geek pride and accomplishment.

Gmail has since grown to be the top web mail provider, and Google has also extended its use as an enterprise communications and collaboration tool through Google Apps. Going beyond the refresh in email interfaces, Gmail was actually a work-in-progress for several years, retaining the “beta” badge that meant its owner was still actively doing development. Features that started out as opt-in Google Labs options were later on added as basic functionalities. These included integrated instant messaging, text messaging, scheduling and the like. Gmail has now grown to become a full-fledged productivity platform, incorporating Calendar, Contacts, and even spinning out some features into refreshed mobile services like Google Voice and Hangouts.

Email – refreshed

With Inbox, Google aims to improve on the mobile experience. The refresh came about with the idea that with the rise of social media and connected-everything, email and mobile users are bombarded with a lot of messages and may have difficulty filtering out the good ones from the useless ones. “With this evolution comes new challenges: we get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks—especially when we’re working on our phones,” writes Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President for Android, Chrome and Apps. “For many of us, dealing with email has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do—rather than helping us get those things done.”

“We decided, ‘What if we cleared our minds, started fresh, and built something new to help people get back to what mattered to them?’” said Gmail product director Alex Gawley, in an interview with the New York Times. “What if we did more of the work for them?”

The result is a two-year development period for what is intended as a long-term replacement for Gmail. The developers have built Inbox’s interface to resemble a social network news feed, in which relevant content from messages like pictures, quotes and other dynamic information. Google Inbox also features cards reminiscent of Google Now, which display flight information, reminders, package tracking, photos, and the like.

Inbox works on mobile devices (Android and iOS included), as well as Chrome for desktop use. To reflect the latest UI focus of Google in the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop, Inbox subscribes to Material Design, which means aggressive navigation bar colors, smooth animations and crisp copy. What makes Inbox stand out, however, is that it is essentially a Google Now version of one’s email inbox, complete with context-based recommendations and card metaphors.

It’s still Gmail

One might ask whether this is not just a duplication of efforts that third-party app developers like Mailbox (acquired by Dropbox) have done over the years. After all, Mailbox already treats emails as “tasks” and actionable items that users can snooze, reschedule and mark as “done”. The main difference, however, is that Inbox is an effort done in-house, so it has direct access to users’ Gmail data, instead of having to rely on IMAP, with all its synchronization and speed issues.

This means that Inbox is essentially a client meant to replace Gmail, incorporating features from other Google applications. However, users can still use the original Gmail interface if so needed. Still, Inbox goes beyond simply acting as an email client. Using Gmail’s data mining capabilities and meta web content, it will pull relevant information based on email content. For example, emails regarding your flight reservation will come complete with a card with flight information and updates. The same goes for emails with hotel bookings and other reservations.

Inbox also adds to the categorization feature that Gmail uses to group priority email, social media updates, forum alerts and other updates. With the “bundles” feature, Inbox can automatically organize content like receipts, depending on how the user trains it.

And when the situation calls for a user to simply delay action on a message, there’s the “snooze” function, which will alert the user for action later on — useful while on-the-go.

How to get it

Google wants Inbox to be a mobile-first experience, so users will need to download the Android or iOS apps in order to activate their Gmail account for Inbox use. However, the service is currently by-invite only. Google will be sending out invitations to users, and requests can be sent via inbox@google.com. Users who have Inbox can then invite friends to activate their own — exactly how Gmail started out.

With the promise of a fresh new interface and with a marketing plan with viral focus, it’s 2004 all over again.

The post Google's Inbox Promises to Reinvent Email With Dynamic, Actionable Content appeared first on VR World.

5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were recently leaked through several Russian cybercrime web forums earlier this week. Google had already confirmed the issue yesterday, though it claims that no compromisation of its data systems was done that led to leakage of these user accounts.

The leaked Gmail accounts were first published on a Bitcoin forum, and were submitted in the form of a standard listed text. The forum user who posted the account credentials claims that most of the data in the text are still usable. However, the administrators of the forum have already deleted the passwords, and only left the usernames for verification. Most of the account access data on the list are written in English, Spanish and Russian.

Though a substantial number of the listed usernames are legit, Google says there is no reason to panic. Reports highly suggest that the source of that data did not come from Google at all, but rather accumulated from hundreds of other websites and online sources (which are unrelated to Google’s own services) that might have used the same username and password.

Google’s own security blog even claims that only less than 2% of the username and password combinations on the leaked list actually worked. Furthermore, the time span of the accumulated passwords stretches as far as three to five years ago, which may mean that even if your account is on the list, the password may already be completely different to the one you have now.

Nevertheless, Google still advises Gmail users to at least check their accounts for possible security holes, and stay vigilant against phishing, malware and spam websites. Taking the necessary steps to prevent accounts from being accessed illegally goes a long way. Google’s 2-Step Authentication is also a plus, and can prevent unauthorized access even if your username and password becomes exposed.

This post originally appeared on Bright Side of News*, VR World’s sister site.

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5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were recently leaked through several Russian cybercrime web forums earlier this week. Google had already confirmed the issue yesterday, though it claims that no compromisation of its data systems was done that led to leakage of these user accounts.

The leaked Gmail accounts were first published on a Bitcoin forum, and were submitted in the form of a standard listed text. The forum user who posted the account credentials claims that most of the data in the text are still usable. However, the administrators of the forum have already deleted the passwords, and only left the usernames for verification. Most of the account access data on the list are written in English, Spanish and Russian.

Though a substantial number of the listed usernames are legit, Google says there is no reason to panic. Reports highly suggest that the source of that data did not come from Google at all, but rather accumulated from hundreds of other websites and online sources (which are unrelated to Google’s own services) that might have used the same username and password.

Google’s own security blog even claims that only less than 2% of the username and password combinations on the leaked list actually worked. Furthermore, the time span of the accumulated passwords stretches as far as three to five years ago, which may mean that even if your account is on the list, the password may already be completely different to the one you have now.

Nevertheless, Google still advises Gmail users to at least check their accounts for possible security holes, and stay vigilant against phishing, malware and spam websites. Taking the necessary steps to prevent accounts from being accessed illegally goes a long way. Google’s 2-Step Authentication is also a plus, and can prevent unauthorized access even if your username and password becomes exposed.

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Within the past few days there have been multiple stories of banks trying to scrub the web of their mistakes. One story involves a Goldman Sachs contractor accidentally sending an email to a random Gmail user instead of sending it internally to a Goldman employee (@gmail.com vs @gs.com). In the story, Goldman Sachs demands that Google delete or ‘unsend’ the email from the Goldman contractor to the Gmail user. Unfortunately for Goldman, Google really has no reason to comply with Goldman’s request even if it was entirely erroneous. Goldman went as far as to sue Google in court demanding that they ‘unsend’ their email from Gmail’s servers, however this would be tantamount to effectively deleting a user’s email without their consent. Additionally, there really isn’t any legal precedent for Google to remove the email from the user’s inbox, especially if the mistake came from Goldman’s end and not Google’s. A typo is a mistake, and people make mistakes and it’s Goldman’s problem to deal with, they can’t just wish it away.

However, Goldman Sachs is not alone in trying to scrub the web of their mistakes. Merrill Lynch is attempting to do the same with Google searches by claiming to use the European privacy law to remove negative search results about their former CEO during the company’s rockiest times. Merrill Lynch’s old CEO, Stan O’Neil, was CEO of the company up until 2007 when he was forced to resign as CEO and was ultimately replaced by John Thain. Many attribute the decisions and choices made by Stan O’Neil to the company’s ultimate absorption into Bank of America in order to keep the firm solvent and alive. Wikipedia calls it a merger, but the reality is that it really was a bailout to save Merrill Lynch from going under. Business Insider reports that multiple entries regarding Stan O’Neal’s mistakes and role in Merrill’s near demise have been scrubbed from Google searches even though they were factually accurate and represented a fair summary of the events that led to his departure from the company.

The problem with these occurrences is that they basically exemplify the exact fears and problems that the new European law about having the right to be ‘forgotten’ would create. They allow people with money and power to effectively scrub anything about them that seems undesirable off the internet. The above examples are two perfect examples of wealthy banks and bankers trying to use their clout to manipulate how the world sees them with their money and power. But they aren’t alone, businessmen, politicians and virtually anyone with any kind of power would obviously like to curate the results about them on the internet and get rid of the ‘bad’ results. But then we no longer have an open and free internet and we’ve basically just got an incomplete picture of the world. One that we had before such laws were passed. Sure, there are probably examples where such things could be useful, but the reality is that you could be trying to hire someone and do a few Google searches and find out that person is clinically insane and tried to murder someone with a hammer. That is pertinent information that reflects upon someone’s character and may make them look bad, but is still an important part of how the information on the internet works.

Update: It looks like Goldman was actually successful in getting Google to comply with the request, even though Google said that they would first need a court order before they did so. It still isn’t clear if Google was served a court order or not, but based on Reuters’ reporting it seems as though the court case is still pending. The case is currently titled as, Goldman, Sachs & Co v. Google Inc, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 156295/2014.

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Google, the company behind the popular email app Gmail has released a new feature as part of the popular email program that allows images taken from your smartphone to be easily available in your email. This is Google’s way of easily resolving the problem that some users might have with trying to share their images from their smartphones with friends and family over email. Do keep in mind that this feature is designed to be used in Gmail’s web app and is designed to keep people’s phones in their pockets so that they don’t have to connect their phone to their computer to share images over email.

Sure, you could always share the images directly from your smartphone, but if you’re going to write a lengthy email, chances are you’ll do it from your laptop or desktop rather than your smartphone.

The main feature that enables this functionality in Gmail is the Auto Backup feature of Android/Google+ that allows your photos to be auto backed up to Google+ into a private album for backup or sharing purposes. Some people are weary of such an Auto Backup feature because of what kinds of images could be auto backed up into their Google+ accounts, but the truth is that these photos are backed up into a private album that can only be accessed when logged into the user’s account. Sure, for some this feature may not be worth the potential privacy sacrifices that it makes, but if your phone gets broken, lost or stolen, you know that your images are not all lost.

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But for some odd reason, Gmail is currently (12:19PM CET) experiencing its second large outage in the past 30 days. The service is unavailable for the third hour in a row. Outtage began somewhere around midnight California time (09:00AM CET), and continued through the whole morning into a lunch break. I received several e-mails from California and various European countries, and the problem isn’t local, but global. Affected users are from both gmail.com and googlemail.com domains (no wonders there, googlemail.com is just an alias), so if you want to check your e-mail, tough luck.

For some odd reason, Gtalk works with no issues at all, and even shows what e-mails are coming to your inbox. But web interface and iPhone/Blackberry simply cannot acces them.

Another case of server scripts gone awry?

UPDATE #1 February 24, 2009, 12:34 CET - We have received a short statement from Google: “We know how important GMail is to our users so we take this very seriously. We are working on solving the problem in hand.”

UPDATE #2 February 24, 2009, 15:40 CET - Gmail and Gtalk are back, but roughly 20-30% of all visitors can still expect severe difficulties at login. According to Google, no e-mail has been bounced, and the problem lied in interfaces, not in the database. This confirmed our doubt in the article itself.

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Customization features fit nicely in Windows Vista theme selection...sorry, used WinXP and Royal theme for this screenshot ;)

This brought life into old Gmail interface, and I have to say, I am still undecided on what team is the best. I went with Planets, even though Summer Ocean has its good sides.
Unlike Facebook’s revamp (that yielded a lot of controversy), you can simply choose to ignore the themes, or try to find something for yourself.

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