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Smart companies tolerate security researchers who hack their products. Smarter companies pay them for it.
Put Google in that second category.
On Monday, the search giant announced on its security blog that it’s expanding its “bug bounty” program, a rewards system that offers payments of up to $3,1337 to anyone who can demonstrate a serious security vulnerability in its software. Instead of merely focusing on Chromium, the open source code behind its Chrome browser, those bounties now apply to the company’s Web application bugs, too.
Any hacker that finds an exploitable bug on a Google site that hosts “highly sensitive authenticated user data or accounts”–domains like Gmail, YouTube, Blogger or any other Google service–can tell Google about the issue privately and earn anywhere from $500 to $3,1337 for especially clever finds. (That 1337 signifies “leet”, semi-ironic hacker jargon for an “elite” practitioner of the digital dark arts.) If any researcher would rather donate their bug bounty to charity, Google is offering to match it.
On top of giving independent researchers an incentive to help eliminate vulnerabilities in Google’s code, the program may also help keep those bugs private before they’re fixed. Google’s rewards come packaged with restrictions on how the researcher can publicize his or her find. “We believe handling vulnerabilities responsibly is a two-way street,” Google’s security team writes. “It’s our job to fix serious bugs within a reasonable time frame, and we in turn request advance, private notice of any issues that are uncovered.”
Google is far from the only bug-buyer on the market: Firefox-creator Mozilla, Verisign’s iDefense, and HP’s Zero Day Initiative all offer bounties for vulnerabilities. (Last month a twelve-year-old earned $3,000 by exposing a bug in Firefox.) But those companies pay for bugs in traditional desktop applications, not Web-based apps. Google’s program doesn’t apply to its client programs like Picasa or Android, but opens the bounty field to common Web bugs like cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery, weak points that Web-focused security firms like White Hat Security say exist in over 80% of sites.

Google is looking to develop the features of its Street View and further enhance it by refreshing the images every year from now on. This decision was prompted by the fact that urban landscapes are in a state of flux at all times. To be able to keep up with this constant changes happening in the cities, this move was decided upon by Google.

In the same vein, the European Union is reviewing certain regulations concerned with the way Google is trying to make images of the cities of the world available on the World Wide Web for everyone to see. The EU want to know more about Google’s retention policy concerning the Street View Image.

According to Google, the Street View Images should be retained for a year. However, according to the European Union, the officials think that the period of one year is too long and want it to be shortened to six months. Also, the EU wants Google to put out notices in the media so that people know when the company will send their Street View cameras to take the pictures of the cities in general.

 
As inflation in Pakistan climbs to sky high rates, more and more people are looking for alternatives to make money to make ends meet.
Many of these people turn to the internet as a source of income and majority of them get caught up in a web of deception spun by scammers and con artists. In fact a study claims that the top cyber crimes in Pakistan are financial crimes.

Why is it so attractive?
Making money via internet is attractive for a number of reasons.
The comfort of sitting at home and generating income is massively appealing. Add to it that the only investment is a computer and an internet connection and you’ve got yourself a potential goldmine.
Scammers count on this desire to make a quick rupee, to achieve their goals. Everyday one gets hammered by an unending stream of emails trying to part you from your cash. But now that most people are aware of the risks of junk email, scammers are turning to more inventive ways to cheat people out of their money.
Scamming has reached new heights these days with the saddest development being this trend spreading fast in Pakistan with our own people trying to cheat us out of our own money.
Check following ads appearing in our main stream newspapers:



Minting Money in the name of Registration Fee!
One example is the now defunct rozzgar.tk. This website claimed to be an advertising agency with connections to various companies in Pakistan. They tried to lure people into the concept of free cash, namely, by offering money to display ads on websites and blogs even if they received zero traffic.
Too good to be true? Well, yeah. The catch was that they had a registration fee. They offered different packages, with the expensive ones offering more money to host ads on your blog. You might be rolling your eyes on how could one fall for such an obvious scam but estimates suggest that they managed to acquire around 4 million rupees in the space of one month, before shutting down. Thousands of people lost money and when the scam was reported, they just disappeared with all the money.
Trapping in the name of Adsense:
Undoubtedly, if you have interesting content to offer and you wish to generate some money from your efforts, Google Adsense is your best friend. It has been referred to as the online moneymaking machine. In a sense, it is just that. Blogs with high traffic are generating significant amounts of money through Adsense.
But with it comes a generation of scammers hoping to exploit its popularity. And surprise surprise, this seems like a popular way to commit fraud amongst our fellow country men. Some rely on fake checks they claim they received from Google, and offer information on how others can do the same by visiting a specific site or signing up with a program which costs money or it could just be a link to earn the scammer in question some money. Take this for example:
Scammers use various techniques to get your attention, few being:

• They claim to increase ones Adsense earning many folds by unraveling the “Adsense secret” for a meager amount of money. But the truth is that there is no secret to that.
• They offer lists of certain golden keywords which they claim can help to generate more traffic and clicks. And it can help to earn more revenue per click. But Google itself offers these lists to facilitate the process.

Not only this, one can come across banners of people offering up to 30,000 Rs for working only a few hours a day using Adsense. Alarmingly, even our newspapers are starting to display these scam ads (given above). Most of
these scams hit people who are new internet users or particularly the jobless.
Get Verified Google Adsense Account in Rs 500: Another Fake!
Keeping in light the amount of fraud committed by countries like India and Pakistan,
Google has complicated the process of obtaining an Adsense account. It requires unique content, your own domain, and that your blog be older than 6 months to get an account.
Sadly, now that an Adsense account is not easy to obtain, exploiters are now offering “verified Adsense accounts” in a few hours for money. It’s a scam. Don’t fall for it.
Ahsad Javed did a detailed post on Google Adsense Verified Account fraud here
Implications:
Google has strict security policies and when it uncovers the amount of corruption being done in Pakistan in its name, it may ban Adsense which would badly hit thousands of people in Pakistan, specially our bloggers.
As I draw to closing this post, I’d just like to say that be smart forget about the notion of easy money. And don’t fall prey to the vultures in wait in the cyber world, it only spurs them on and gives our country a bad name.
Here are a few websites you can read to help you understand the nature of cyber crimes and how to stay clear of them. These sites also offer tips on recognizing scams.

Here are a few websites you can read to help you understand the nature of cyber crimes and how to stay clear of them. These sites also offer tips on recognizing scams.

• http://www.webworkshop.net/adsense-ready-websites-scams.html
• http://www.listmyfive.com/94d846fa/The-Top-Five-Ways-to-Avoid-Being-Scammed-on-the-Internet
• http://factoidz.com/10-signs-you-are-being-scammed/
• http://www.computercourage.com/2008/10/03/phishing-how-to-avoid-being-scammed-via-email/
• http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

How to Earn Money Online?
Okay, this is also a fact that earning money online is possible. But believe me that’s not as simple as these newspaper ads suggest. If you want to money, keep following things in mind:

• You can earn money, if you have a skill that others may get benefited of over the internet. For example, development, design, data-entry, proof reading, writing content and so on.
• If you want to earn through adsense, then be informed: Adsense only favors highly visited website. So now its in your hands on how you make your website popular. Maybe by adding very very interesting and useful information, so that every other web user come to you website.

We recently wrote on how to report to Google the copyright infringements for those who think their genuinely written unique content is aggressively copied over the web.

Well, to all those legitimate bloggers/ webmaster you may not need to report websites for copy/pasting any further.
Actually here’s a good news, at same time a death warrant for those scamper bloggers who copy/paste content on their website, and the news is:

“we (Google) are evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”, Matt Cutts, Head of SPAM at Google
Via: mattcutts.com

In simple words, all those websites which reproduce content from elsewhere on the web will be ranked lower or will be marked as SPAM and won’t appear in search engines at all.
So if you are working on a blog idea, which will reproduce content from other websites, straight away forget it. If you are already doing this then start looking for other ways to earn money.

Google has launched version 9 of its Chrome browser, which features Chrome Instant search, a speed enhancer that loads Web pages as you type a URL. Other notable upgrades include WebGL support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, as well as access to Google's new Chrome Web Store.

Chrome users don't have to do anything to upgrade to version 9, which downloads and installs automatically. You'll see this message when the upgrade is complete, and Chrome needs to restart:
For most users, Chrome Instant will be the most noticeable change. It's turned off by default, however. To activate it, go to the Basics tab of Chrome's options and check the box in the Search section:
With Instant enabled, most Web pages will load as soon as you type a URL in the search box (or "omnibox" in Google's parlance). In the example below, the PCWorld site appeared as soon as I typed "pc" in the omnibox.

WebGL support brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser--without the need for additional software. Google's Body Browser, for instance, uses WebGL to employ a computer's GPU to speed up rendering of 3D graphics:
Lastly, Chrome users in the United States can now access the Chrome Web Store:
There's a link to the store on the New Tab page, plus two sample apps. If you ignore the sample apps, they'll eventually disappear.
Overall, Chrome 9 adds some compelling upgrades while retaining the speed and simplicity that makes Google's browser so compelling. Do check it out.

 
Google has come up with a new online store ‘Market.Android.com’ which includes advanced software applications that run on Android-powered mobile phones. The store will allow Android users find new apps more easily from their computers, see recommendations by friends and download applications to their mobile devices, reports The TOI.

Microsoft's Bing search engine was accused Tuesday of pilfering its search results from Google. Google said it discovered Bing's tactics through a "sting" operation mounted at the end of last year.

In its latest Customs General Order 22/2006, the CBR had announced the removal of two telecom equipment from the list of other products that could be imported without paying a penny as duty, industry sources said.

“It appeared that the government privileged the Chinese products on grounds that some of the Chinese companies are manufacturing telecom components locally and duty-free import would not hurt the local industry’s business scope.”

“Before the fresh order, only China’s ZTE remained the main beneficiary of the duty concession, which has been operating as vendor for the PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunication Company) for the past two years and fulfilling its almost all telecom equipment supply orders.”

“The PTCL has hired a Chinese firm to computerise its billing and customer care operations at a cost of Rs 1.8 billion almost a year ago,” said the source. “Under that contract, ZTE will be responsible to automate the whole system within 18 months and complete the task in accordance with international telecom standards.”

 
Google Fellow Amit Singhal recently accused Bing of copying some of Google's search results. Google had created what it calls "synthetic queries" - test search queries which tie two terms which normally have no connection, and discovered that after a while the same connections start appearing on Bing.

For example, Google created a synthetic query linking the non-sensical word "hiybbprqag" to a result about seating in a theater in Los Angeles. After a while, the same result appeared on Bing; Google claims that the only way this could have happened is if Bing simply copied the result from them, as the only connection between the query and the result was - Google.
Microsoft's answer, coming from a company's spokesperson, was clear but not very revealing: “We do not copy Google’s results.”

Bing Corporate Vice President Harry Shum later expanded Microsoft's short answer to a more detailed one, essentially claiming that the search results Google claims Bing has been copying have in fact come from Bing's users.
"We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users," wrote Shum.



But Google didn't plan on letting this one go that easily. The company decided to escalate the incident on its official blog with a long post, detailing how its engineers discovered that Bing is copying Google's results, and what they did to "catch" Bing red-handed.
The post is extremely detailed and reads like a detective story for the tech-minded, so we invite you to read it in its entirety here. Here's the important bit, though: Google claims that Bing is using "some combination" of IE8, Bing Toolbar and possibly some other means to send data on what people search on Google and what results they click to Bing.
"Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation," concludes Google.