Google Enterprise Blog

This is incredible. This is the first time, I have seen a LARGE company

* Putting its users above profits

* Stand up to Chinese Government.

Since accounts of human rights activists were targeted, this operation was clearly done at the behest of Chinese Government. I'm disgusted by the levels to which the Chinese Government can stoop.

It is time the world stands up to China. If a corporation, whose main aim is to generate profits can eschew it and take a moral high ground why can't the government do it? Are the cheap goods from china so necessary that it is not worth antagonizing China ?

EDIT: Additional details from Enterprise blog post http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/keeping-your-data-safe.html

It was an attack on the technology infrastructure of major corporations in sectors as diverse as finance, technology, media, and chemical

This is clearly an act of espionage by the Chinese Government. The bigger questions is whether these are the only companies targeted or the only ones discovered. This is not the first time, the chinese have tried something like this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7970471.stm

The researchers said hackers were apparently able to take control of computers belonging to several foreign ministries and embassies across the world using malicious software

Responding to 2) in my experience as a web developer divs are generally no longer used to round corners because the market share of the browsers which don't support css3 rounded corners is increasingly negligible.

Personally I prefer CSS3 rounded corners because they do a better job of decoupling design, functionality and content (which in a perfect world would each fit completely into css, js and html respectively).

Most developers I know followed suit with Google after they dropped support for ie7 in Google Apps back in 2011: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.ca/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-modern-browsers.html

EDIT: Looks like rounded corners only got added to ie9 so Google's ie7 stuff is irrelevant, my guess: a degraded experience on ie8 is generally taken as acceptable.

We believe the context we provide is a much more valuable use of the limited sidebar space than the ads it replaces; and we think that adds value to the platform, both for Google and for its users. People evidently agree, as (nearly) nobody complains about the loss of the ads, but lots of people love the utility we provide - and indeed have switched to Gmail to get it.

We're not interested in cheating Google out of their ad revenue, although we suspect the Gmail ads aren't making that much revenue anyway.

We have a good relationship with Google, and we were a launch partner for their contextual gadgets platform: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/putting-email-in-context-with-gmail.html

Google will still scan your mails but you will not be shown any ads.

For viruses and spam, yes. But Fastmail does that too.

In addition to these increased security measures, as we recently announced, we’ve now turned off ads in Google Apps services. This means administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn on ads in these services. We’ve also permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Google Apps, which means Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for advertising purposes.

Source: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.de/2014/05/protecting-google-apps-customers-and.html

This isn't 8 weeks notice. It's a reminder about a policy that was announced fifteen months ago. Administrators have had plenty of time to migrate away from Google Apps or figure out how to deploy newer browsers on time.

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-modern-browsers.html

Users of unsupported browsers aren't locked out; they just see a message telling them to upgrade, and some functionality might eventually degrade. Degraded functionality is documented at:

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33864

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/keeping-your-data-safe.html
http://gcn.com/articles/2011/11/10/cloud-hack-via-google.aspx
i guess this was before google poured the billions into it with it's engineering elite, class-A data security. Google may be more secure but google is also a big target. a personal cloud is less likely to get hacked. if i live in the woods with $1000 and only have one lock, i'm probably less likely to be broken into than a giant bank filled with tons of money in the middle of a city, even with it's heavier security.