google rant. please read all before taking their side in a reply.

[James]

Cutter, I'm sorry but that's a very poor way of looking at the issue. Microsoft made Windows insecure, not hackers. Hackers take advantage of the insecure operating system.

Without hackers, there's no reason to make something secure. So basically you're saying that its the police force's fault for not being omniscient, and not the fault of the criminals for doing the crimes.

When the most common solution to fixing some unexplainable Windows error is to restart the computer, thats pretty f----- up.

I dunno about Linux, but with Macs, too, it's a common thing.

[Kyle]

Without hackers, there's no reason to make something secure. So basically you're saying that its the police force's fault for not being omniscient, and not the fault of the criminals for doing the crimes.

Horrible analogy. I was simply stating that hackers do not make Windows insecure, Microsoft did. We cannot stop crime or hackers, so those are given variables that cannot be changed... only avoided.

I will not debate whether the police are doing the best jobs they can. For one that would involve political discussion, and I am not educated on that issue, nor would I ever want to be.

As far as Windows... it is a given that Microsoft did NOT pay enough attention to security. Windows was made for Suzy Q computer user who knows **** about securing her system (simple updates even). Only recently has Microsoft started to implement automated updates, and a builtin firewall.

If you say that Microsoft has done their job at securing Windows, I will not speak about this anymore with you.

[Kyle]

I dunno about Linux, but with Macs, too, it's a common thing.

You're right, I shouldn't have said that about Windows. Many operating systems are like that .

[Cutter]

I was a member of Slashdot for years, but I refuse to believe that a company with billions of dollars in cash would be completely negligent in regards to the security of its software.

Computer security is a cat and mouse game. 100% secure is a computer in a locked building with armed guards and no outside connection.

Security, SEO spammers, Hackers, its not something I worry about. Its just there. I do what I need to work around the problems or even use them to my advantage. SEO spammer dominating my keywords? Spam report to Google.

[bassplaya]

There are alot of things MS can do to harden security of Windows.
It comes with all "enabled" by default, but the prob that there're too much stuff irrelevant for Suzy Q and her cat -- will she ever need DCOM, UnPNP, QoS, Netbios over TCP etc?

[AmbulanceBlues]

I don't see the point with Google. I've always used MSN Search because it's what comes up when I search from the address bar in MSIE. I know alot of people don't use MSIE but just what is the point of going to www.google.com instead of searching somebody (anybody) else from a toolbar?

[deronsizemore]

Well in response to the original post about Google. Personally, I've never liked Google as much as I have Yahoo. Yahoo has always gave me the results that I wanted so I was happy with it. Only in the last couple years when I got into web design/publishing that I even started visiting Google (mainly for their other services). But everytime I do a search on Google I get crap results, thus why I go back to Yahoo. It just really urkes me that the jackass spammers have seemingly not much trouble at all getting ranked high in Google for everything under the sun, and Google can't catch it? Even a little bit of it and put a stop to it. I see threads all the time where people are wondering why they cannot get a good ranking in Google, or even a ranking at all for that matter, but for some spammer it's not a problem. It may not happen anytime soon, but Google with self destruct eventually. They are getting way to big and are trying to do way to much, IMO.

EDIT: I do realize there are spammers ranked high in other search engines also...just seems like moreso in Google.

[KLB]

You know it is really sad when this post was started just over a year ago and I would have swarn it was talking about events of the last few weeks if I hadn't noticed the original posting date.

Icebane is right, Google really does have a responsiblity to web publishers. The insane fluctuations we are seeing in Google's SERPs creates a great deal of instability for legitimate web publishers making it harder to project traffic and income and thus making it harder to invest in more content. Users want quality content and services in search results. In order for Google to serve users better, they have to provide web publishers with reasonably stable search results so that they know how much they can invest in the content that users want. Without web publishers working hard and spending money to create original content there would be nothing of value for Google to show to users.

Google treats web publishers like pond scum and looks at us like their enemy. The fact of the matter is we should be partners in an effort to provide users with what they want.

The only people who are benefiting from the way Google is acting is spammers who scrap content off of other sites at little or no cost and roll out millions of pages of scrapped gibberish to see what sticks.