How Google Chrome Is Putting Your Company In Danger: Fill & Download for Free

#1 — Google tracks you. We don’t.You share your most intimate secrets with your search engine without even thinking: medical, financial and personal issues, along with all the day to day things that make you, well, you. All of that personal information should be private, but on Google it’s not. On Google, your searches are tracked, mined, and packaged up into a data profile for advertisers to follow you around the Internet through those intrusive and annoying ever-present banner ads, using Google’s massive ad networks, embedded across millions of sites and apps.In fact, it’s a myth that you need to track people to make money in web search. When you search ‘car’ we can show you a car ad without knowing anything about you. That’s how we make money and it doesn't involve tracking because it is based on the keyword and not the person. Google could do this too; they just choose not to— all that tracking is to power their ad networks so that ads can follow you around the Internet using your search history and other information they have on you.So-called incognito mode won’t protect you either. That’s another myth. “Incognito” mode isn’t really incognito at all. It’s an extremely misleading name and in my opinion should be changed. All it does is delete your local browsing history after your session on your device, but does nothing from stopping any website you visit, including Google, from tracking you via your IP address and other tracking mechanisms like browser fingerprinting. Here’s the fine print:To keep your searches private and out of data profiles, the government, and other legal requests, you need to use DuckDuckGo. We don’t track you at all, regardless what browsing mode you are in.Each time you search on DuckDuckGo, it’s as if you’ve never been there before. We simply don’t store anything that can tie your searches to you personally, or even tie them together into a search history that could later be tied back to you. For more details, check out our privacy policy.#2 — Block Google trackers lurking everywhere.Google tracks you on more than just their search engine. You may realize they also track you on YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Gmaps, and all the other services they run. For those, we recommend using private alternatives like DuckDuckGo for search. Yes, you can live Google-free. I’ve been doing it for many years.What you may not realize, though, is Google trackers are actually lurking behind the scenes on 75% of the top million websites. To give you a sense of how large that is, Facebook is the next closest with 25%. It’s a good bet that any random site you land on the Internet will have a Google tracker hiding on it. Between the two of them, they are truly dominating online advertising, by some measures literally making up 74%+ of all its growth. A key component of how they have managed to do that is through all these hidden trackers.Google Analytics is installed on most sites, tracking you behind the scenes, letting website owners know who is visiting their sites, but also feeding that information back to Google. Same for the ads themselves, with Google running three of the largest non-search ad networks installed on millions of sites and apps: Adsense, Admob, and DoubleClick.You know those ads that creepily follow you around everywhere? Most of those are actually run through these Google ad networks, where they let advertisers target you against your search history, browsing history, location history and other personal information they collect. Even less well known is they also enable advertisers like airlines to charge you different prices based upon your personal information.These ads are not only annoying — they are literally designed to manipulate you through targeting to make you buy more things, and just showing them to you is an act of Google profiting off of your personal information.At DuckDuckGo, we’ve expanded beyond our roots in search, to protect you no matter where you go on the Internet. Our DuckDuckGo browser extension and mobile app is available for all major browsers and devices, and blocks these Google trackers, along with the ones from Facebook and countless other data brokers. It does even more to protect you as well like providing smarter encryption.#3 — Get unbiased results, outside the Filter Bubble.When you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google. On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time from all that tracking I described above.That may appear at first blush to be a good thing, but when most people say they want personalization in a search context they actually want localization. They want local weather and restaurants, which can actually be provided without tracking, like we do at DuckDuckGo. That’s because approximate location info is automatically embedded by your computer in the search request, which we can use to serve you local results and immediately throw away without tracking you.Beyond localization, personalized results are dangerous because to show you results they think you’ll click on, they must filter results they think you’ll skip. That’s why it’s called the Filter Bubble.So if you have political leanings one way or another, you’re more likely to get results you already agree with, and less likely to ever see opposing viewpoints. In the aggregate this leads to increased echo chambers that are significantly contributing to our increasingly polarized society.This Filter Bubble is especially pernicious in a search context because you have the expectation that you’re seeing what others are seeing, that you’re seeing the “results.” We’ve done studies over the years where we have people search for the same topics on Google at the same time and in “Incognito” mode, and found they are significantly tailored.On DuckDuckGo, we are committed to not putting you in the Filter Bubble. We don’t even force people into a local country index unless they explicitly opt-in.#4 — We listen.Google is notoriously hard to get a hold of. Locked out of your Gmail account? Sorry, we can’t help you. The Knowledge Graph says you’re dead? That’s unfortunate. Unless you’re a journalist or influencer of some kind, good luck getting anyone at Google to listen.Meanwhile at DuckDuckGo we read every piece of feedback we get. We respond on social media. In short, we listen. My DMs are open and I read all the email sent to me personally. Feel free to reach out.#5 — We don’t try to trap you in our “ecosystem.”It used to be that you search on Google and then you click off to the top result. Over time, Google bought more and more companies and launched more and more of their own competing services, favoring them over others in their search results. Google Places instead of Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. Google Products instead of Amazon, Target, etc. They’re in travel, health, and soon jobs. Anywhere there is money to be made, you can expect them to get into it eventually.Even when you do click off, Google AMP tries to still trap you in Google. And these tactics are not just on the search engine.On Android on many implementations there is immovable Google search widget and you can’t even change its search engine if you want to. By just installing it by default, this behavior is a direct analogue to Microsoft putting IE on Windows in the 1990s, but worse since it takes up more of the smaller screen. The same is true for other Google services on Android as well, forcing carriers to bundle and promote them. We personally have similar issues with Chrome search engine integration.At DuckDuckGo, we aren’t trying to take over the world. We don’t have an “ecosystem” to trap you in. We just want to help you get to where you want to go as fast as possible, and protect you as much as we can in that process.#6 — We have !bangs.To further this point, we have a built-in feature called bangs that enables you to search other sites directly, completely skipping DuckDuckGo if you like (But remember, you’ll be subject to those other sites’ privacy policies, including their data collection practices). Here’s how it works. Let’s say you know you want to go to the Wikipedia article for ducks. You can just search for “!w duck” and we will take you right there.The ! tells DuckDuckGo you want to use a bang shortcut, and the w is an abbreviation for Wikipedia. You can use the full name, though we have a lot of shortcuts such as !a for Amazon, !r for Reddit, etc. There are literally thousands of sites that this feature works with, and so most sites you think of will probably work. It also works with our autocomplete so you can see what’s there easily.If you routinely search a particular site, like Stack Overflow for coding answers or Baseball Reference for stats or All Recipes for something to make, you can just go right there.If DuckDuckGo is your default search engine, you can just type this right into your browser's address bar, and skip loading our search engine altogether. We will just route you to the right place!#7 — We strive for a world where you have control over your personal information.Our vision is to raise the standard of trust online. If you share this vision, supporting DuckDuckGo helps us make progress towards it. For the past seven years, we’ve been donating a substantial portion of our profits to organizations that also work towards the Internet we want — an open Internet where you can take control of your personal information.We believe that privacy policies shouldn’t be default “collect it all," but instead offer a clear and compelling case as to what benefits you get by giving up your personal information. If you share this view for the future of data privacy, you can vote with your feet.#8 — Our search results aren’t loaded up with ads.For many Google searches, most of the entire first page is ads. On mobile it can be even worse.Not so on DuckDuckGo. We keep ads to a minimum, and naturally they're non-tracking ads, based only on search keywords and not on a personal profile or search history. In fact, as stated above, it’s a myth that you need to track people to make money in web search. When you search ‘car’ we can show you a car ad without knowing anything about you, based on the keywords you type in.#9 — Search without fear.When people know they are being watched, they change their behavior. It's a well-documented behavior called the chilling effect, and it happens on Google. For example, an MIT study showed that people started doing fewer health searches on Google after the Snowden revelations, fearing that their personal ailments might get out.“Suppressing health information searches potentially harms the health of search engine users and… In general, our results suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behavior from government surveillance on the Internet.”Your searches are your business, and you should feel free to search whatever you want, whenever you want. You can easily escape this chilling effect on DuckDuckGo where you are anonymous.#10 — Google is simply too big, and too powerful.Google is GIANT, the epitome of Silicon Valley big tech, with a market cap of around 750 Billion dollars (at the time of writing), 75,000 employees, dominating search, browsing, online advertising, and more, with tentacles in everything tech, online and offline. Last year they outspent every other company on lobbying Washington.By comparison, DuckDuckGo is tiny. We’re currently a team of about 45 people, scattered across the globe; I’m in Pennsylvania. We have a very narrow focus: helping you take control of your personal information online.The world could use more competition, less focus on ad tracking, fewer eggs in one basket.Join the Duck Side!

Short answer, yes.Simply put AWS is the de facto leader in cloud computing by market-share. It has established itself as the clear market leader with already an Accounting Rate of Return (ARR) of $10B and beating an incumbent is extremely difficult.If you look at Google trends for cloud computing vs AWS you can clearly see how the market has now equated "AWS" as "cloud computing", in the same way that we say "Google" when we really mean "search".​The difficulty in displacing a #1 company is that they already have the ecosystem established around partners, vendors, and if they are lucky, they have established themselves as the primary platform. That means every single company that exists around this market is developing their tooling to be compatible with this platform.If you look at the history of displacing #1 companies there are only two ways that have truly been repeatable. The first is that the market moves away from the dominant company. If you look at the dominance of Dell and Microsoft in the earlier decades and now the current success of Apple, you can say that Apple has finally displaced those companies. However, by the numbers, Apple is still a small percentage of the desktop and laptop market, and instead has shifted the market away from personal computers to smartphones, where they derive more than 50% of their revenue.The second example of displacing a #1 company is when the market is doubling every year. This was done by Google. Prior to their entry into the market Yahoo was the clear leader and while they had dominance in the market, the Internet users were doubling every year. That means if Google came in and was able to acquire more then 50% of the new users that were signing up for the first time, then over the next several years they could displace Yahoo.The last example, which sits a bit between the two is the notion that a stronger product can't take market share away from an existing #1 company. However, the most critical market component that is needed for this to succeed is a low cost of switching. If you look at the dominance that Google Chrome was able to establish it is because the Internet continued to grow and also because the cost of switching browsers was really low. The installation was easy and outside of just exporting your bookmarks there wasn't much to worry about.Now given these dynamics we can look at AWS's position in the cloud computing market.Firstly, clouds are built backwards, not forwards. This is the main mistake that just about every company that tries to compete in the cloud makes. Amazon built AWS internally and then decided to resell it to developers. That gives them several advantages. First, they are able to capitalize on the scale of their operations from the primary core business which means they can start with an extremely large amount of capacity from day one. Because this service is needed internally to run their core business, even if the cloud fails publicly, they will still continue to invest in it internally so it minimizes their risks dramatically.This means that it is very difficult for an start-up to compete, because the scale of their capacity currently is worth billions of dollars infrastructure alone. Trying to challenge them would require the same level of investment and that's before you even factor in head count, engineering time, and R&D.The second factor that works in their favor is that the more a customer consumes of any cloud computing platform the higher the switching costs become. It can require weeks or months to move between providers, which means that the customers they acquire, especially at the high end, are going to have very low churn.The third factor is that the new companies being built see AWS as the preferred partner. So they are acquiring the lions share of new startups, similar to new Internet users, in the Yahoo vs Google analogy.Over the past decade they have established themselves as a partner to the Fortune 500 and when they won the $600MM government contract to build out a datacenter for the CIA they established themselves as a highly trusted partner.Amazon Wins $600 Million CIA Cloud Deal As IBM Withdraws ProtestIf the CIA trusts them to host their infrastructure, then why wouldn't anyone of the Fortune 500 which are the latest adopters.The question isn't so much how to displace AWS as what were the market conditions that allowed them to establish this level of dominance in the first place. And that story is quite simple.They were given nearly a decade head start.The most dangerous part wasn't that they were given a headstart in acquiring customers and revenue, but that they have now clearly established themselves as the #1 platform for cloud computing.Companies like Rackspace have exited the cloud entirely and pivoted to providing managed services on top of AWS. VMware which was on-prem cloud tried to build out a public cloud presence nearly a decade late, and now have instead switched to helping companies run VMware in the public cloud, aka, AWS.And the large hardware manufacturers such as DELL and HP have attempted to launch clouds and ultimately shuttered them because the businesses were very different. They weren't shipping units, they had to run a service and that required a totally different set of skills and distribution channels to acquire customers.The remaining players in the space are IBM, Microsoft, and the new entrant of Google.Looking at each one individually we see that IBM's play to acquire softlayer was mainly to preserve their revenue base off of their existing customers. Microsoft, very much ended up in the same scenario as well. Given the large amount of revenue both companies have in the enterprise segment, these offerings will generate revenue, however, their growth will be slow, because they are simply canabalizing their own revenue and preventing it moving to AWS.The last entrant, Google, is the most interesting. Google had better technology than Amazon, and in fact, AWS was a very buggy platform at first. Had Google followed the innovators dilemma and taken this entry seriously when it first occurred and released their own cloud, they could have potentially dominated the market. However, Google thought that the product wouldn't take off and by the time they entered the game they had already given a decade long headstart to AWS. At that point they could release a better product, but they can't compete with the ecosystem and platform side that AWS had established.Google was also the only company that had a larger scale of deployed infrastructure than AWS and had also built more complex service layers to run their own platform. And though Google was always focused on developers they had put up too much of a walled garden approach. They released App Engine, but it didn't provide enough flexibility for developers to really embrace it. And while App Engine does provide a significant amount of revenue on absolute terms, comparative to AWS it was too small and growing nowhere as quickly.Now they are playing catch up to a dominant company that has established itself as a technology leader, gained tremendous market share, and has basically made itself the very definition of cloud computing.With the largest companies in the world already in the market and no signs of growth slowing down and no network effects that can displace those that AWS has already created as a platform AWS is the clear leader and will only continue to further establish that over the next decade.The remaining companies are protecting their revenue or trying to pick off revenue from AWS and they are fully committed to these strategies so they will establish serious revenue for their businesses; however, it will not lead to substantial growth of those platforms because they will simply not be able to catch up to AWS.The lesson is simple.Don't give your competitor a 10 year head start in a market with high switching costs and allow them to become the default platform.

Below are some of the best questions (with quality answers from experts) on Quora.Please note that there are many questions that may come under several sub-sections, but they have been put under one. (for example, a question pertaining to innovation at Facebook will come under Facebook as well as Tech trends)What are the underlying reasons for "The Patterson Cycle" and why is it roughly 14 years long?What are the key differences between "Normals" (normal mainstream users) and tech early adopters?For top technology companies, what % of their engineer time is devoted to tough, groundbreaking, intrinsically satisfying problems and what % is routine grunt work a 1X engineer could handle?In a growing tech company, what are the most valuable things on which an engineering manager should spend time?Why haven't CPU clock speeds increased in the last 5 years?Which have been the most successful acquisitions in the consumer technology space?Why has India failed to produce tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.?A. Technology trends, sci-fi and the futureWhat will be the greatest invention in the 2010s?What will the Internet look like in 2020?Can I freeze my dead body for 2000 years, keep my money legally safe in an account earning compound interest, thaw 2000 years later, re-animate and repair my body, and then live the life of a billionaire?What is the theory/concept behind the "Miniature Arc Reactor" built by Tony Stark?What do you think of Project Loon?Will the traditional watch industry collapse with the rise of wearable technologies such as the Apple Watch?What technologies should one learn to stay ahead in the IT industry from now until 2020?What is the future of search online?What will be the next big thing after Facebook and Twitter?What were the top tech trends in 2012?What are the recent trends that are revolutionizing online and mobile Payments?What is the most important technology of the future?B. StartupsWhat is the proper definition of a startup?Which startups have the best stories?Which is more crucial to the success of a startup: the idea or the execution?What are the best-kept secrets about startups?What are some great "must-watch" videos for entrepreneurs and startups?B.1. Conceiving, starting and growing a start-upB.1.1 Conception/ideaWhat are the best ways to think of ideas for a startup?What were the most ridiculous startup ideas that eventually became successful?What is the best business to start with the lowest overhead?I'm a student creating a startup. What do I do now?What are some incubators for start up companies in India?Every time I come up with an idea to build an app, there is something similar already available. Should I still go ahead and build my app?What are some potential low-cost businesses that can be started and operated by a teenager?B.1.2. StartingHow do you start a tech startup as a non-technical person?What is the best advice for a young, first-time startup CEO?How do I find good technical co-founders?What are some blogs and sites a new startup should send press releases to?What is the one thing that you would advise against when starting a startup?How does one create a business plan?Where can I submit my startup after launching?What are some tips on connecting with high-profile people that can help your startup?Is freemium a stable economic model? Why?How do you launch a startup when you don’t have any technical experience?How do I become a hustler?What are some techniques startups use to initially draw attention to their product?B.1.3 GrowingWhat is needed to grow a web start-up's user-base from zero to one million?Startup Traction: How do social sites (e.g. Hunch, Foursquare, Reddit, Digg) go from 1 to 100K users?What tools do you use to monitor buzz about your startup?Is it hard to build, market and maintain a web app that makes at least $1,000 a month?How can I generate website traffic with $0 marketing budget?What can you do to market a start-up without any marketing budget?How do e-commerce startups like One Kings Lane, Manpacks, and Dollar Shave Club handle the inventory fulfillment side of their business?B.1.4. Avoiding failureWhy have most personalized news startups failed?What has been the biggest startup failure in Silicon Valley in the past 5 years?What's the #1 reason why tech startups fail?What causes the slack at large corporations?B.2. On CEOsWho are considered the best CEOs in the history of Silicon ValleyWho is the most likeable CEO in the tech industry?How do Bill Gates, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey manage their email?What books should be included in the ultimate 'CEO's library'?Who are the "must follow" CEOs on Quora?When companies such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Quora started off, were the founders aware from day one that they may change the world?B.2.1 Start up CEOsWhat does it feel like to be the CEO of a start-up?What separates the top 10% of startup CEOs from the rest?As a startup CEO, what is your favorite productivity hack?What are the top 5 questions a VC should ask a startup CEO?B.3. Silicon ValleyWhat are the stupidest decisions ever made in Silicon Valley?What does Silicon Valley think of the NY Times article "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem"?Which places should a technophile visit on a trip to San Francisco and Silicon Valley?What do people in Silicon Valley plan to do once they are over 35?Why is so much of Silicon Valley obsessed with small ideas that don't solve a problem?What's the dark side of Silicon Valley?B.4. List of startupsWhich are the hottest startups in India?What are the hottest tech startups in Singapore?What are the hottest startups in 2014?C. Blogs, journals and other resourcesWhat are the best technology and gadget blogs?What are some must-see Google Tech Talks?What are the best sources for tech news? Why?What are the best online resources (blogs, podcasts, articles, etc.) on startups and entrepreneurship?What are some tips for getting your startup featured on TechCrunch, Mashable, and other tech blogs?What are the best blogs covering startup and early-stage operations?D. IndustriesD.1. Mobile TechnologyWhat was daily life like before almost everyone had cell phones?What is the best framework for creating mobile apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?Should I start on Android or iOS for a mobile app?D.1.1 AndroidWhat are the best Android apps and why?Why should I root my Android phone?Which is better, Android or Windows Phone?Which Android Apps make the phone a great tool?D.1.2. AppleWhy is Siri important?What will Apple come up with next?What are the must-have iPhone apps? Why?What are the best blogs on iOS UI Design?What's it like to work on an Apple design team?How can Apple employees be so innovative?D.2. Social MediaWhat are the significant digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2014?reddit (website): What are some must-follow subreddits?How did LinkedIn (product) get its initial traction?Why is Pinterest successful?What is the technology stack behind Pinterest?Why haven't major companies like Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo succeeded in creating social networking platforms?D.2.1. FacebookWhat features do you wish Facebook had?Is Facebook Graph Search a danger to Google, LinkedIn, Yelp or Foursquare ?What startups would be good acquisitions for Facebook?What programming languages are used at Facebook?What kind of automated testing does Facebook do?What about Instagram made it worth its $1B acquisition by Facebook?What are some decisions taken by the "Growth team" at Facebook that helped Facebook reach 500 million users?D.3. GamingHow did game developers pack entire games into so little memory twenty five years ago?Who are the top ten game programmers from the start of video-game history to the modern day? Why?Is there a game engine for a beginner/non programmer?How are technology trees developed for strategy games?What is different about how Blizzard Entertainment develops games?E. CompaniesWhich is better to work for, Google or Facebook?For a CS major out of college, which is better, taking a job as a Facebook Software Engineer or Google Associate Product Manager?Who are the best recruiters in Silicon Valley for technology companies?E.1. GoogleWhat are some mind-blowing facts about Google?What startups have been founded by ex-Googlers since 2004?What should Google do to completely overhaul its social strategy?What were the four/five key decisions that Larry Page and Sergey Brin made in the early days of Google?Is Google Ventures a good place for a startup to get funding?What are some things a Googler should do or experience before leaving to work elsewhere?How do engineers get promoted at Google?What does "-4^(1/4)" mean and why is it connected to porn?E.1.1. SearchJust like Larry Page and Sergey Brin unseated their incumbents with a better search engine, how likely is it that two Computer Science PhD students create a search engine that unseats Google? How vulnerable is Google to this possibility?Information Retrieval: Why does Gmail take longer to search my inbox than Google takes to search the entire web?In which types of search does Google most clearly fail? And what avenues and sites address these issues best or most promisingly?E.1.2. Other ProductsWhy did Google Buzz fail?Why did Google Wave fail to get significant user adoption?Why did Google kill Google Reader?What are the six types of email users identified by Google?E.1.3. Life at and after GoogleWhat makes someone a great product manager at Google?Who is the most successful and/or most respected Product Manager at Google?How does Google’s Google Innovation Time Off (20% time) policy work in practice?What is the worst part about working at Google?What is it like working with Larry Page and Sergey Brin?E.1.4. Cracking the Google interviewWhat interview questions does Google ask their Front-End engineer candidates?What should I expect in a Software Engineer interview at Google and how should I prepare?E.2. Tesla and SpaceX and Elon MuskWhat are some mind blowing facts about Tesla Motors?How feasible is Elon Musk's idea to establish a colony on Mars in the 2020s?Tesla Motors: What is the difference between Tesla Autopilot system and Google driver-less car?What key people has Elon Musk kept as part of his team starting at PayPal, and moving on to SolarCity, Tesla and SpaceX?F. Tips and HacksWhat are some lesser known Google Chrome tips and hacks?What are some lesser known Google search tips and hacks?What are some lesser known Gmail tips and hacks?What are some lesser-known hacks for LinkedIn?What do engineers change in their houses that other people would not think of?G. FunnyWhat is the most catastrophic mistake made by an intern at a company?What are the most creative euphemisms for layoffs?What are some of the funniest Windows error messages you have ever seen?H. MiscellaneousWhy did Google kill Google Reader?What are the best examples of large companies innovating effectively?What is it like to be exposed to new technology after a 20+ year prison sentence? What is it like to use something like an iPad after being released from a 20+ year prison sentence?Image sources:Page on strata-gee.com1st TechSoup Data Digest for 2013! – datachiefsSocial Media LinksFuture vision - WikiGagMy Quora Q&A Lists: Best answers of 2014 | Entrepreneurship | Books | Book Recommendations | Hinduism | Travel |Cooking | GoogleI keep a running tracker of all such lists and resources in my post Bookmarks.