Google's Antitrust Worries Won't Go Away Just by Paying Huge EU Fines
NEWS ANALYSIS: Google’s problems with the EU stem from Android phones, and the fact that Google insists on including its own browser and shopping apps. After six years of wrangling with European antitrust regulators, it appears that Google is about to be fined for its insistence that Android phone makers include its Chrome browser and because of how it handles shopping inquiries for hotels and flights, among other items.Adding to the problem, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was charged a few days ago with using Android to squeeze out rivals, according to a report in Reuters.The problem seems to be that Google is willing to enter into a consent decree in which it does not admit fault, which is the way things work in the United States. Things are different in the EU, however, and regulators there are insisting that Google admit that it was at fault for its conduct and that the company explain how it’s going to change things.European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, meanwhile, has been receiving a steady stream of complaints from European and U.S. companies about Google’s practices. Because of this, she’s probably not going to scale back the EU’s demands.

So what’s going on here? After all, isn’t Google doing exactly the same thing as Microsoft and Apple? Well, no, they’re not.

While Microsoft does include a browser and lots of apps with the copy of Windows 10 that runs on phones, its market share is so tiny it may be in negative numbers. In addition, until Microsoft and Google agreed to stop suing each other, Microsoft was one of the companies complaining about Google. Apple’s phones aren’t being built by anyone but Apple, so the company isn’t in a position to use iOS or its own apps to dominate other companies.Google provides Android to lots of phone makers and requires that some of its own software and search be included. This makes it the one mobile operating system company that has crossed the line and incurred the ire of European regulators.It’s also probably no coincidence that European regulators are less than totally enamored with the idea of a dominant American company pushing around smaller non-American companies, a few of which are European.Other U.S. companies, notably Microsoft, have long since learned to their grief that the EU doesn’t appreciate American dominance. This is one reason why European computer users are able to buy Windows in Europe without Microsoft’s browsers. That company, eventually paid billions in fines after its 10-year-battle with the same EU Competition Commission.There’s little doubt that Google will also end up paying billions of its own. The EU has little reason to compromise with Google, since the company doesn’t really have anything to offer the EU in terms of a settlement, except, of course, its money and a change in behavior. Worse, if Google tries to go to court to get the commission off its back, its chances of winning are slim.So what’s going to happen? Google will be forced into a settlement of the EU’s choosing at some point in the future. If Google plans to keep selling its software and services in Europe, it will have to agree to whatever terms the EU demands, which will include fines, probably in the billions. It will have to change the requirement that companies making and selling mobile phones in Europe include its browser and search service. 
Source: eWeek

Malware Posing as Legitimate Apps on Google Play, Security Firm Warns

PhishLabs says it has discovered 11 malicious apps posing as popular payment apps on Google’s official Android application store.

The people most at risk of downloading Android malware on their mobile devices are those who install apps from unofficial third-party mobile application stores. But that doesn’t mean that those who download apps from Google’s official Google Play store are completely immune to malicious software.PhishLabs, a company that provides anti-phishing services, this week said it has discovered 11 malicious applications disguised as mobile apps for popular online payment services on Google Play since the beginning of this year.The applications purport to give users access to their online payment accounts from their mobile devices, PhishLabs security analyst Joshua Shilko said in a blog post this week. But in reality, the only functionality the apps have is to collect the user’s logon credentials and personal data and to send that to a remote command and control server belonging to the malware authors, Shilko said.PhishLabs did not identify the 11 payment brands whose apps were spoofed and uploaded to Google Play. According to Shilko, 10 of the companies whose customers are being targeted by the malicious apps provide links in their Websites directly to their mobile applications. One of the companies being targeted explicitly notes on its Website that it has no mobile application, he added. All of the apps appear to have been developed by the same malware author or authors.

Android owners who mistakenly download and use the fake apps are presented with a Web page designed to look and act like the real brand’s Web page. Any logon credentials a user supplies to the fake app are immediately sent to the attacker.

The phishing apps then present the user with more forms seeking additional information such as the answers the user might have supplied to the apps’ security questions. Once the malware has collected and sent all the information, it presents the user with an error message claiming that either the username and password combination was wrong or some other similar error.Google did not respond to a message seeking information on how the same attackers might have managed to upload 11 malicious apps to its Google Play store since the beginning of January.Google, which used to have relatively little controls for checking the security of applications loaded to its Android app store, these days reviews all submissions using a combination of manual and automated security testing processes.But the presence of the malicious payment apps in Google Play suggests more work needs to be done in this regard, Shilko said. All of the malicious applications that PhishLabs identified went through Google’s security review process. The fact that none was identified as malware, despite some obvious red flags, raises questions about the effectiveness of Google’s security review processes, he said.In separate comments to eWEEK, Shilko said PhishLabs has been communicating with Google regularly regarding each application as it is detected. “We also communicate with the registrars and hosting providers whose infrastructure is being utilized for the related phishing content,” he said. “At of the time of publication, all of the applications referenced in the post had been removed except for one.”
Source: eWeek

Iron Mountain Opens 'Near-Infinite' Capacity Cloud Archive

Based on EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, this archive features cost-efficient, rapid and anytime-anywhere access with enterprise-class service-level agreements.

Iron Mountain, the patriarch of all data storage companies at age 65, launched a new cloud archive offering April 28 that gives the company a fresh approach for the digital 21st century.The IM Cloud Archive is described as a cost-effective repository for organizations needing to protect and preserve data retained short or long term for compliance, legal or value-creation purposes. This is not unlike most cloud archive services offered by companies such as Amazon, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Livefyre, CommVault and a list of others.What is a bit different is that it’s stored for the long term at Iron Mountain’s underground facility in Boyers, Pa. It is also designed to enable “near-infinite” scalability as the volume of data grows, using a pay-as-you-use model, the company said.Iron Mountain built its reputation on its ultra-secure underground storage facilities in several locations around the world. One of them, in West Los Angeles, holds the original prints of most of Hollywood’s old movies from the last century.

The company lays to rest the doubts of potential enterprise customers about exactly where their important data and files will be stored in its cloud system. Iron Mountain tells them up front where everything is and how it can be accessed through the cloud, which in this case is operated by EMC.

Unlike on-premises disk and tape infrastructures, Iron Mountain Cloud Archive doesn’t require customer-owned storage equipment or archiving platforms, and it eliminates resources to manage tape- and disk-refresh life cycles, while avoiding the cost and hassle of a technology migration from one generation of tape or disk to another.Based on EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, a global multi-purpose platform, this archive features cost-efficient, rapid and anytime-anywhere access with meaningful enterprise-class service-level agreements (SLAs).The archive also has end-to-end information management and disaster recovery and data preservation, the company said.Data movement to and from Iron Mountain Cloud Archive is handled in the open platform using ECS that works natively with Amazon S3 API, OpenStack SWIFT, CAS, Atmos and several cloud gateways, including EMC CloudBoost, CloudArray and Isilon Cloud Pools, Nasuni, Panzura, Seven10 and CTERA.For more information, go here.
Source: eWeek

Microsoft Limits Cortana to Edge and Bing on Windows 10

Claiming to protect Windows 10’s integrated search experience, Microsoft is locking down its Cortana virtual assistant.

Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant technology included with the Windows 10 operating system, is being reined in, the company announced yesterday.Like Siri on Apple’s iOS devices, users can call on Cortana to search the Web for sport scores, weather forecasts and answers to a variety of questions. As the Windows 10 user base has grown—270 million devices are running the OS at last count—Microsoft has discovered that Cortana has been taken in unintended directions, resulting in what the company claims is an unreliable user experience.”Some software programs circumvent the design of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana,” Ryan Gavin, general manager of Microsoft Search and Cortana, said in a statement. In particular, they can interrupt some of Cortana’s task completion and personalized search capabilities, he said.In response, Microsoft is locking down the Cortana search experience.

Betting that no one likes a flaky assistant, virtual or otherwise, the company has taken steps to refocus Cortana’s attention. Gavin said that “to ensure we can deliver the integrated search experience designed for Windows 10, Microsoft Edge will be the only browser that will launch when you search from the Cortana box,” which appears next to the Start menu icon.

Wasting little time, Microsoft quickly followed up on its word.As recently as this morning, Cortana would display Bing search results in a user’s preferred Web browser, or Google Chrome in this writer’s case. Now, while responding to a spoken or typed question that requires a Web search, Cortana will open up the Edge browser instead.The change doesn’t extend to the rest of Windows 10, Gavin noted. Users can still set their own default browsers using the operating system’s default app manager and select their favored search engine within their Web browser’s customization options, he affirmed.Microsoft isn’t the only company facing challenges with commercializing its digital personal assistant technology.Last week, it was revealed that Apple had settled a 2012 Siri patent lawsuit for $24.9 million, which will be paid to Dynamic Advances, a subsidiary of the Marathon Patent Group. The legal battle stems from a voice-activated app technology patent issued to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., four years before Siri first appeared in the iPhone 4S. Apple is immediately paying Marathon $5 million, with the rest to follow after several conditions are satisfied.Meanwhile, in preparation for this summer’s highly anticipated Anniversary Update for Windows 10, Cortana is gaining some new Office-related functionality.A new Windows Insider preview build (14332) released this week enables users to search Office 365 content with Cortana. After linking their Office 365 work or school accounts with Cortana’s notebook, users can ask the assistant to find files stored on OneDrive for Business and SharePoint, as well as emails, calendar events and contacts. Also included are tweaks to the Cortana Reminders interface.
Source: eWeek

Defining the OpenStack Cloud Roadmap

VIDEO: Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, gives the new roadmap effort a ‘D’ grade, but expects improvement soon.

AUSTIN, Texas—In the standard philosophy that has defined open-source since its earliest days, developers simply “scratch an itch” for things they want done, rather than follow predefined product roadmaps. At the OpenStack Summit in Austin, Texas, this week, one of the things that was discussed was the emergence of the OpenStack Foundation roadmap effortto help provide visibility into what is coming next for the cloud.In a video interview with eWEEK, Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, discusses his views on the roadmap effort and how he expects it to evolve.While OpenStack has not previously had a formal roadmap, there are multiple technical items, including community blueprints and feature requests that have been used since OpenStack was first created in 2010, that do serve to provide some direction.”In a software company, product managers can go and dictate a roadmap and define what resources will work on specific efforts,” Bryce said. “You can’t do that in open-source.”

The OpenStack roadmap effort isn’t trying to dictate a roadmap either, but rather is attempting to collate all the different sources of information about what contributors and operators are doing or want to do, as they build OpenStack. Bryce noted that the OpenStack roadmap effort is providing a prioritized view of what people are talking about in the community.

“I would give us a ‘D’ right now in terms of the grade and how well it’s working because it’s our first iteration,” Bryce said. “For us, the roadmap team is about collecting information from developers and users so people have good data about what is being worked on.”Watch the full video interview with Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, below:

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
Source: eWeek

Comcast Diversifies With .8 Billion DreamWorks Acquisition

DAILY VIDEO: Comcast buying DreamWorks Animation for $3.8B as it expands its reach; Microsoft adds Nano server option to Windows Server 2016; Yammer crosses organization borders with external groups feature; and there’s more.

Today’s topics include Comcast’s acquisition of DreamWorks Animation, the addition of a nano server option to Windows Server 2016, new extensions to Yammer’s team collaboration capabilities and Yahoo’s decision to allow activists members to join its board of directors.

Comcast is acquiring DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion as the cable television service continues to diversify by adding complementary businesses as the future of cable television remains unfocused.

The deal, which was announced April 28, brings together Comcast with the powerful DreamWorks film producer, which has produced a wide range of popular animated features, including Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda.

The merger brings huge opportunities for content streaming to Comcast, which like other cable companies, is seeing its business impacted by customers who are replacing their cable connections with streaming video and original programming from services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Microsoft released Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 on April 27, a test build that includes what its dubbed the Nano Server as an installation option.

First announced a year ago, Nano Server is a container- and cloud-friendly version of Windows Server that dispenses with the GUI, 32-bit support and other software components that compete for CPU cycles.

This week, Microsoft has incorporated Nano Server as a deployment option on both the Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5.

To help administrators keep a closer eye on their Nano Servers, along with Windows Server 2016’s new data center modernization features, Microsoft also announced the release of System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5.

Yammer is branching out by allowing users to bring their colleagues at other companies into team collaboration sessions.

The new External Groups feature, launched yesterday, builds on Yammer’s existing external contacts and networks functionality to extend team collaboration to colleagues that may be on the same project, but draw a paycheck from different employers.

“Office 365 customers can now create external Yammer groups for seamless and secure collaboration across company and organizational boundaries,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office 365 Client Applications, in an April 26 announcement.

Yahoo, facing rising unrest from number of dissatisfied investors, revealed April 27 that it has decided to diffuse a potential proxy fight with activist investor Starboard Value LP by inviting four of Starboard’s independent directors to join its board.

Starboard CEO and Chief Investment Officer Jeff Smith, the most vocal of the company’s investors in recent months, will be among those joining Yahoo’s board.

He will be joined by Tor R. Braham, former managing director and global head of technology mergers and acquisitions for Deutsche Bank Securities, Eddy W. Hartenstein, a director of SanDisk, Sirius XM Holdings, Broadcom Ltd., and Rovi Corporation, and Richard S. Hill, chairman of Tessera Technologies.

Hartenstein was formerly CEO of the Tribune Company, chairman and CEO of DirecTV and publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times Media Group. Yahoo independent board members Lee Scott and Sue James will be leaving the board as part of the Starboard deal.

Source: eWeek

Microsoft Flow Takes On IFTTT at Work

The software giant gets serious about workflow automation with the launch of its IFTTT-like Flow service and a preview of the company’s custom line-of-business app builder, PowerApps.

IFTTT is getting some competition from Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash., software giant on April 29 announced Microsoft Flow, a workflow automation service aimed at business users.IFTTT, short for “If This Then That,” is a popular Web service that uses configurable templates, or “recipes,” to trigger a series of interactions between other Web and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for users, typically with a single action, or in an automated fashion. For example, IFTTT recipes can be used to automatically upload a new Dropbox file to Google Drive or tweet an Instagram picture as a native Twitter image rather than a link back to Instagram.On April 29, Microsoft launched a similar product called Flow. Unlike IFTTT, which welcomes all comers, Flow is restricted to the company’s business customers and requires a work or school email address to sign up for the service.”Microsoft Flow makes it easy to mash-up two or more different services,” said Stephen Siciliano, principal group program manager for Microsoft Flow, in an April 29 announcement. “Today, Microsoft Flow is publicly available as a preview, at no cost. We have connections to 35+ different services, including both Microsoft services like OneDrive and SharePoint, and public software services like Slack, Twitter and Salesforce.com, with more being added every week.”

Early adopters can pick from dozens of productivity-enhancing templates in the Flow gallery. Selections include “flows” that issue Slack notifications when new files are uploaded to Dropbox or automatically copy Salesforce leads to CRM, among several others.

In the near future, Microsoft plans to roll out more enterprise-friendly features, added Siciliano. The company is working on enabling connections to on-premises data sources and adding intra-organizational content-sharing capabilities, he added.Joining Flow is the preview release of PowerApps, a cloud-based service that enables organizations to build custom line-of-business applications, forms and workflows without code. Like Flow, PowerApps is restricted to Microsoft’s business and education users.The PowerApps Studio client, available at the Windows Store, enables users to create apps from a variety of data sources including Salesforce or Dynamics CRM; customize prebuilt templates; or start from scratch. Once finished, apps are saved to the cloud and can be shared with other users within an organization.Users can access their newly created apps with a Web browser or the PowerApps mobile clients for iOS and Android. Microsoft assures that the PowerApps platform respects data source permissions, ensuring that only authorized users access an app’s data.PowerApps can also be used in conjunction with Flow, revealed Darshan Desai, Microsoft PowerApps group program manager, in a blog post. “Microsoft Flow is fully integrated with PowerApps, which allows you to automate business workflows as part of the app. For example, send an approval email when a button is clicked or create a record in your CRM system,” he wrote.As the PowerApps preview wends its way to general availability, Microsoft is concentrating on improving performance and adding more templates and connectors. Support for an expanded set of SharePoint data types is also in the works, said Desai.
Source: eWeek

Mitel, Polycom Deal Is Latest Move in a Dynamic, Crowded UC Space

Mitel officials in April announced the company is buying video conferencing vendor Polycom for $1.96 billion, a move that will create a much larger communications and collaboration company that will compete with such established players as Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Avaya. It’s also a continuation of Mitel’s aggressive acquisition efforts under CEO Rich McBee, who has argued that the unified communications (UC) market is ripe for consolidation and that his company will be among the buyers. That said, Mitel’s acquisition of Polycom will be only the latest move in rapidly changing UC and video conferencing markets, both of which are being impacted by such trends as an increasingly mobile workforce, a proliferation of mobile devices, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and big data, and the growing demand for cloud- and software-based solutions. That has led to other acquisitions, partnerships and product rollouts designed to help vendors gain ground in a collaboration space that is highly competitive, very crowded, and dominated by Cisco and Microsoft. Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst with ZK Research, has argued that companies must be able to evolve and adapt if they are to survive. “There’s not enough revenue for all companies to win,” Kerravala told eWEEK. “Vendors must be willing to put both feet into the new [cloud] world and embrace it, and not sacrifice the future for their legacy businesses.” This slide show takes a look at some of the more recent moves by vendors.

Source: eWeek

Oracle Expands Cloud Services With Acquisition of Textura

Oracle is looking more and more like Salesforce every day. This is a direction the company needs to follow as its hardware sales continue to slip.

Oracle added to its growing cloud services roster April 28 by acquiring publicly traded Textura, a provider of construction contracts and payment management cloud services for about $663 million in cash, net of Textura’s liquid assets.The purchase price amounted to $26 per share, exactly the price at which the stock closed April 28.Oracle is looking more and more like Salesforce every day. The cloud services business is a direction the company needs to follow as its enterprise hardware sales continue to slip each quarter.Textura says its cloud services process about $3.4 billion in payments for more than 6,000 projects each month.   The company provides its cloud services in a consumption model preferred by the engineering and construction industry, in which the companies involved pay based on project activity.

In addition, Textura said, usage of its cloud services creates a network effect of sorts that benefits participants because more than 85,000 general and subcontractors are connected to the platform and benefit by shared information and economies of scale.

Oracle said it will integrate Textura into its Primavera software to fill out its construction services offering. The Redwood City, Calif.-based IT giant bought Primavera, which makes project management software for the construction industry, back in 2008.Oracle Primavera offers a suite of cloud solutions for project, cost, time and risk management. The Oracle Primavera flagship products have been completely re-architected for the cloud, and the result is a set of cloud services that are growing rapidly as construction and engineering companies embrace digital transformation. Together, Oracle Primavera and Textura will form the Oracle Engineering and Construction Global Business Unit offering a comprehensive cloud-based project control and execution platform that manages all phases of engineering and construction projects.Cloud is the fastest growing part of Oracle’s business. Oracle Cloud currently has about 63 million users and carries an average of 23 billion transactions each day. Oracle Cloud runs on 30,000 devices and uses 400 petabytes of storage in 19 data centers around the world.  Textura’s mission, according to CEO David Habinger, is “to bring workflow automation and transparency to complex construction projects while improving their financial performance and minimizing risks.”Twelve-year-old Textura, based in Deerfield, Ill., went public in June 2013 yet has never reported a profit. In its last fiscal year, it had recorded $87 million in revenue with a net loss of nearly $17 million. It had about $79 million in cash on hand at the time of the acquisition.The transaction is expected to close in 2016, subject to approval by Textura stockholders.
Source: eWeek

Zscaler Uses the Cloud to Create a VPN Alternative

A new Private Access service takes a different approach to enabling secure remote connectivity.

Since the dawn of the Internet era, virtual private networking (VPN) has been the cornerstone of enterprise remote access technology. Now security vendor Zscaler is aiming to disrupt the staid VPN market with a new approach built for the modern cloud era.Zscaler’s core technology is a cloud-based Web security platform that can help reduce risks for connections outbound from an enterprise. In contrast, with its new Private Access technology, Zscaler is aiming to reduce risks for connections inbound to an enterprise.Zscaler has been working on the Private Access technology for nearly three years, according to Patrick Foxhoven, CIO and vice president of Emerging Technologies at Zscaler. He added that Private Access is functionally different from a traditional Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) or Secure Sockets Layer VPN (SSL-VPN).”The VPN space hasn’t been disrupted in a meaningful way in over a decade,” Foxhoven told eWEEK.

Zscaler didn’t want to provide simple network connectivity as a VPN, Foxhoven said, since a VPN in his view can negatively impact security by increasing the attack surface. The Zscaler secure access technology takes a different approach from a traditional VPN, which typically simply provides a secure tunnel into an enterprise network.

“We wanted to bring a disruptive cloud-scale approach to the challenge of remote access,” he said.Zscaler already has a client that runs on endpoints that helps enforce policy and filter outbound Internet traffic. Foxhoven said the client application has been enhanced now to enable the Private Access technology.In terms of the security architecture, Zscaler now also has a lightweight virtual machine (VM) connector technology that can be deployed in a private data center or in a public cloud. Basically, the connector reaches out to the Zscaler cloud service, enabling access to an enterprise or private data center without actually exposing the private areas to the public Internet, Foxhoven said. From a security perspective, Zscaler is using multiple forms of strong authentication, including digital fingerprinting of connecting devices.”We can have a very strong chain of trust and identity,” he said. “We then stitch together very dynamically for on-demand, per-application tunnels.”That is, instead of enabling remote VPN user access, which provides access to a given slice of a network, Zscaler is aiming to provide very granular access to the specific services needed by a remote user.”We’re not giving the client an IP address on the remote network, so the user doesn’t have any presence or remote visibility on the network,” Foxhoven said.In some typical VPN use cases, users are simply aiming to get remote file and printer access, which are both supported use cases in the Zscaler Private Access approach. Another common use for VPN is for remote voice access, providing users with a phone number inside of a corporate network. Most modern voice over IP (VoIP) technologies make use of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is not supported in the first release of Zscaler Private Access. Foxhoven said SIP support is on the roadmap for a future update.”We believe that in the future there is going to be no such thing as a trusted network, and that’s why we have invested in developing Zscaler Private Access,” he said.Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
Source: eWeek