Anonymous Activist Hackers Attack Wikileaks's Enemies, Bring Down MasterCard.com

Anonymous When members of Anonymous make their rare appearances, they often wear these masks, popularized by V for Vendetta. Vincent Diamante

"Anonymous," a group of hackers perhaps best known for their attacks on the Church of Scientology, have appointed themselves the protectors of Wikileaks. To that end, they've begun a full-scale attack on those who have harmed Wikileaks in the past. This is no cute hacker's mission--it's a full-on crusade that has already taken down Mastercard.com.
Several major companies have made the operation of Wikileaks much more difficult. Mastercard and PayPal both blocked all donations to the site, claiming Wikileaks dabbles in "illegal activities" (despite Wikileaks has never been formally charged with a crime). That's a major source of revenue for Wikileaks, the cessation of which is going to prove a serious problem for continued operation. Other targets of the wrath of Anonymous include Amazon, which briefly hosted the site before booting them due to concerns over terms of service violations (including proper ownership of stored documents and possible security concerns), the Swedish lawyer representing the women who are accusing Julian Assange of sex crimes, and the Swiss postal system's financial arm (which blocked Assange's accounts).
Anonymous is not really a traditional group, a fact easily divined from its name. There's no leader, and no real organization. Instead, various hackers (who often populate messageboards like 4Chan and wikis like the Encyclopedia Dramatica), working independently, identify under the "Anonymous" banner. The group, which has in the past targeted the Church of Scientology and, um, Gene Simmons, typically uses denial-of-service attacks, which flood the target's servers, often disabling them or shutting them down outright.
In this case, some 1,500 hackers operating under the name Anonymous decided to appoint themselves the defenders of Wikileaks and Assange, flooding their targets with denial-of-service attacks. Some, like Amazon, managed to fend off the attacks, but others weren't so lucky. Mastercard's site, thought to be extremely secure, has at the time of this writing been shut down for hours. (Side note: It's a nice quirk that the news coverage of this outage invariably points readers to mastercard.com--but if readers go there, they'll only be making Mastercard's recovery harder but adding more traffic to the pile!)
To Anonymous, all of these companies have been pressured politically to cripple Wikileaks in any way they can. Though Amazon, for one, has denied it, the group continues its attack, hoping to bring visibility to the fight for transparency and openness--or at least extract a little revenge. Hey, Wikileaks knows how to do security, so why shouldn't Mastercard, right?

Quality scores and ad auctions

There's some interest in how and why "quality scores" are used in search engine ad auctions. In this post, we will try to describe "why" we use quality scores; a later post will go into "how," including more information about bids.

When a user types a query into a search engine, it will typically return both natural search results and advertisements. Google and other major search engines use an ad auction to determine which ads are shown and how much advertisers pay for them.

In the auctions, advertisers enter bids that reflect how much they are willing to pay for a click on their ad -- this is called their maximum cost per click (CPC). Ads are then ordered by the product of the bid that is entered and the estimated ad quality score. People often ask why ad quality enters the formula -- isn't the bid per click enough? Why can't advertisers just buy their way to to the top ad position? To see why both components are important, let us look at a simple example.

Suppose that two advertisers are bidding on the keyword "jet airplane." Joe's Jets is selling actual jet airplanes, while Moe's Models is selling models of jet airplanes. Since jets are expensive, Joe is willing to pay a lot per click. But not many people can afford to buy jets, so Joe won't get many clicks. Moe, by contrast, is willing to pay a lot less per click, but he will also get many more clicks.

Which ad should be listed higher in the "sponsored links" section of the search results page?

What matters in this decision is not simply an advertiser's value for a single click -– the maximum CPC that the advertiser is willing to pay -- but rather the total estimated value of showing that ad: the value per click times the number of clicks that the ad is likely to receive.

The number of clicks that the ad is likely to receive depends on the historical clickthrough rate, which is an important component of the ad quality score. Thus the bid per click times the quality score gives us an estimate of the total value of displaying an ad over time. Joe's ad may have a higher value for a single click, but if Moe's ad gets a lot more clicks over time, it could easily have a greater total value. In that case, Moe's ad will be shown in the more prominent position. (Click on the image to view larger.)

The quality score gives search engines a way of aligning the incentives of the buyers, the sellers, and the viewers of ads. The search engine wants to sell ad impressions, but advertisers want to pay for clicks. The solution is for advertisers to bid on a cost-per-click basis, while the search engine estimates the total value of the ad over time: bid per click times the expected number of clicks.

This is a neat way to align incentives, but it has a problem: since the advertiser only pays on a per click basis, it may as well seek as many ad impressions as it can so that as many users as possible will be exposed to the ad. Joe might well want to buy the keywords "rocket ship" even if he only has jets to sell. Why not? Joe only has to pay if someone actually clicks on the ad.

This is where another distinct, but related quality issue arises: an ad that gets very few clicks shouldn't really be shown. It is just distracting from the viewpoint of users. The advertisers may not care much about annoying users but the search engine certainly does. Why? Because if it shows a lot of irrelevant ads, people will likely stop looking at or clicking on ads. They may develop a terrible affliction known in the trade as "ads blindness." Better ad relevance leads to a better user experience.

So search engines often apply a "disabling rule" that inhibits ads with very low clickthrough rates for a given query from being shown. Or they might set a relatively high minimum cost per click for ads that don't attract much interest from users as a way to discourage advertisers from showing ads that annoy users and deliver few clicks. A high cost per click can easily be consistent with a low cost per impression when clickthrough rates are low.

So why are quality scores important? Answer: they lead to a better auction by allowing advertisers to buy clicks, publishers to sell impressions, and users to see relevant ads.

New steps to protect free expression and privacy around the world

In a world where governments all too often censor what their citizens can see and do on the Internet, Google has from the start promoted global free expression and taken the lead in being transparent with our users. We've pressed governments around the world to stop limiting free speech and made it possible for dissidents, bloggers and others to have their voices heard.

As part of those ongoing efforts to promote free expression and protect our users' privacy, today we're announcing Google's participation as a founding company member of a new program called the Global Network Initiative. (The site, at globalnetworkinitiative.org, will be live within a day or so.)

This initiative is the result of two years of discussions with other leading technology companies, human rights organizations, socially responsible investors and academic institutions. Thanks to hard work and cooperation from all parties, the Initiative sets the kinds of standards and practices that all companies and groups should use when governments threaten internationally recognized rights to free expression and privacy.

The Global Network Initiative also offers an important commitment from all parties to take action together to promote free expression and protect privacy in the use of all information and communication technologies. We know that common action by these diverse groups is more likely to bring about change in government policies than the efforts of any one company or group acting alone.

Companies that join the Initiative commit to putting into effect procedures that will protect their users by:

• Evaluating against international standards government requests to censor content or access user information
• Providing greater transparency
• Assessing human rights risks when entering new markets or introducing new products
• Instituting employee training and oversight programs

These are things that Google does now, but joining the Initiative will help us refine our methods and maintain our leadership position. Down the road companies will be assessed on how they're doing in implementing the principles and the Initiative will report those results.

This Initiative is by no means a silver bullet or the last word, but it does represent a concrete step toward promoting freedom of expression and protecting users' privacy in the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now we're actively recruiting more companies and groups to join the Initiative and advance these critical human rights around the world.

Giving consumers control over ads

In her post to the Official Google Blog this morning, Susan Wojcicki, VP of Product Management, announced that we are making interest-based advertising available in beta for our AdSense partner sites and YouTube. Interest-based advertising uses information about the web pages people visit to make the online ads they see more relevant. Relevant advertising, in turn, has fueled the content, products and services available on the Internet today.

Providing such advertising has proven to be a challenging policy issue for advertisers, publishers, internet companies and regulators over the last decade. On the one hand, well-tailored ads benefit consumers, advertisers, and publishers alike. On the other hand, the industry has long struggled with how to deliver relevant ads while respecting users' privacy.

Last month, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission released its principles for online advertising. Likewise, other organizations interested in consumer protection and privacy also recently issued guidelines: The Network Advertising Initiative released its 2008 Self-Regulatory Code of Conduct in December; the Center for Democracy and Technology released its Threshold Analysis for Online Advertising Practices in January; and the Internet Advertising Bureau in the U.K. announced its Good Practice Principles last week. There is a consistent message in all of these guidelines: Consumers need and deserve greater transparency and choice when it comes to online advertising.

As Google prepared to roll out interest-based advertising, we talked to many users, privacy advocates and government experts. By listening to them and by relying on the creativity of our engineers, we built a product that's not only consistent with industry groups' privacy principles, but also goes beyond their requirements. We are pleased that our launch of interest-based advertising includes innovative, consumer-friendly features to provide meaningful transparency and choice for our users:

• Transparency in the right place and at the right time. When users see online ads today, they often don't know what information is being collected, who provided the ad, and sometimes who the advertiser is. We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. With one click on the labels, users can get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.

• Meaningful, granular, and user-friendly choice. For the first time, people will have a say in the types of ads they see by using our new Ads Preferences Manager. With this tool, users can view, add and remove the categories that are used to show them interest-based ads (sports, travel, cooking, etc.) when they visit one of our AdSense partners' websites or YouTube. To provide greater privacy protections to users, we will not serve interest-based ads based on sensitive interest categories. For example, we don’t have health status interest categories or interest categories designed for children.

• Tools that respect users’ choices. With one click in the Ads Preferences Manager or in the advertising section of our Privacy Center, users can opt out of interest-based ads altogether, although it means they will probably see advertising that's less relevant and useful on our partners' websites or YouTube. The opt-out is achieved by attaching an "opt-out cookie" — a small file containing a string of characters that stores a preference for opting out — to a user's browser. Opt-out cookies in the industry, however, have traditionally not been permanent. So Google's engineers also developed tools to make our opt-out cookie permanent, even when users clear other cookies from their browsers.

Transparency beyond privacy policies. With interest-based advertising, we’re continuing to explore new ways of communicating with our users on privacy. We've revamped the advertising section of our Privacy Center. And the Ads Preferences Manager features a video, embedded below, that explains in plain language how interest-based advertising works. All of the videos on the Google Privacy Channel on YouTube are open for comment and we look forward to hearing feedback from our users.

We’ve built our business by earning and keeping the trust of our users. And we’ll continue our dialogue with them and with other stakeholders as we develop new products to make the ads we show our users more relevant and useful.

Extending notice on the Google Book Search settlement

Last October, we announced a settlement agreement regarding Google Book Search that resolves class action lawsuits first filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers. Last Friday, along with the authors and the publishers, we submitted a letter to the court asking for permission to extend what's called the "notice period" for an extra 60 days.

So what exactly does "notice" mean? Notice is an important part of due process. It helps inform class members of their rights under the proposed settlement and gives them a chance to opt out if they wish to. If you've ever received a letter in the mail from a credit card company or product manufacturer informing you that you're entitled to compensation under a class action, then you get the idea of what "notice" is about.

It's pretty easy for credit card companies to contact their cardholders -- they send bills to them all the time. The world's authors, publishers and their heirs are much more difficult to find. So, as the New York Times recently reported, the plaintiffs hired notice campaign specialists Kinsella Media Group to tell them about this exciting settlement, and Google has devoted millions of dollars to fund this notice campaign. Kinsella started by launching a website for authors and publishers and a direct-mail effort. Beginning in January, Kinsella published ads in newspapers and other publications all over the world from Fiji to the Cook Islands to Greenland. And of course, they also placed ads right here at home in the U.S., in publications as diverse as Writer's Digest and USA Today.

The settlement is highly detailed, and we want to make sure rightsholders everywhere have enough time to think about it and make sure it's right for them. That's why we've asked the court for permission to extend the opt-out deadline for an extra 60 days.

Google Book Search settlement will expand access

Over the last few weeks we've heard a number of questions about the Google Book Search settlement and what it means for readers. Over the coming days, we'll attempt to answer some of those questions on this blog, but first, we think it's important to explain how exactly the settlement will help expand access to books in the United States. We'd also like to remind authors and publishers who have questions that they should visit the settlement Notice website.

Have you ever gone to your local bookstore looking for a book only to be told that it’s not there? You look for it on Amazon; they don’t offer it. You go to your local library and it’s not there. But you know that it exists because you read it your freshman year in college.

Or let's say you’re a second generation American interested in reading books in your parents’ native language, Greek. Try finding more than a few books in foreign languages in most town libraries or bookstores in the United States.

Or you're a graduate student who has been doing research on your thesis for years. You think you've read every book there is to read on your topic, but then you type your query into Google Book Search, and you suddenly discover a new original book or monograph that you weren't even aware of before.

Until now, we've only been able to show these users a few snippets of text for most of the in-copyright books we've scanned through our Library Project. Since the vast majority of these books are out of print, to actually read them you have to hunt them down at a library or a used bookstore. And if you can't find them -- because the only known copy is at a library on the other side of the country--you're unfortunately out of luck.

Under the settlement that will change for users in the U.S.:

• When you find the book you're searching for, you’ll be able to preview 20% of the book over the Internet from anywhere in the U.S. If you want to look at the whole thing, you'll be able to go down to your public library where there will be a computer station with access to the whole book for free. And if you don’t want to leave home or want a copy for yourself, you’ll be able to purchase access to an electronic copy of the book. As always, if the book is old enough to be in the public domain, you’ll be able to download the whole book for free.

• If you’re at a university, in addition to your libraries' free access points, your school can obtain an institutional subscription that gives you access to most books that we've scanned. And scholars and students who don’t keep the same study hours as the library will be able to look at any book, anywhere, any time.
  
• If you are vision impaired, the settlement will open a world of books to which you've never had access. Visually impaired people will be able to search for books through the Google Books interface and purchase, borrow, or read at a public library any of the books that are available to the general public in a format that is accessible to the vision impaired.
  
• If you want to read in foreign languages, you will have access to tens of thousands of more books than you have today. Books in Spanish add up to almost 10% of the books already scanned. If you account for the difference in numbers between books in Spanish and English, the usage per book in Spanish is more than three times what it is for books in English.

The settlement won't just expand access to out-of-print books, either. Because authors and publishers will have the ability to let users preview and purchase their in-print books through Google Book Search, readers will have even more options for accessing in-print books than they have today.

For users outside the U.S., the Google Book Search experience won't change unless rightsholders specifically authorize additional uses of their books outside the United States. And while the Google Book Search settlement will only allow for improved access in the U.S., we believe that this will constitute an unprecedented test bed for the development of similar services around the world.

As the discussion continues, it's important to understand what readers stand to gain.

Wired's look at how Google sells and prices ads

Most policymakers are pretty familiar with how TV stations, magazines and newspapers sell advertising. Typically those organizations have a "rate card" with standard ad prices for a 30 second ad or a full-page print ad, and the advertiser pays the standard rate or negotiates a lower rate if they commit to buy ad space in bulk.

That's not how ad space on Google is sold. Instead, all advertisers -- big and small -- bid for their ads to appear when users search on Google for certain terms.

Admittedly Google's ad auction can be a bit difficult to understand because it differs so much from traditional ad models. That's why we have posted videos and tutorials on the AdWords Learning Center explaining how it works.

Now Wired Magazine's Steven Levy has a new article out in the June issue taking an even closer look ad the Google ad auction, and it's a must-read for policymakers who want to understand online advertising. Levy looks at how Google's auction model evolved, the role of algorithmic "quality scores" that ensure users see relevant ads, and how the "second price" auction means that advertisers don't overbid.