Technorati Email Flagged In Gmail As Phishing

Why?

Well possible reasons could be that they use PHP List from their own servers, and the SPF records could do with a little work, plus no indication of things like feedback loops etc. I am not an email deliverability expert.

Delivered-To: list.andy@gmail.com
Received: by 10.211.202.19 with SMTP id e19cs5391ebq;
Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.163.5 with SMTP id l5mr1847786wae.140.1252555022884;
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from mail01.technorati.com (fw01-620.technorati.com [208.66.65.12])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 13si3719602pxi.23.2009.09.09.20.57.02;
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 208.66.65.12 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of noreply@blogcritics.org) client-ip=208.66.65.12;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 208.66.65.12 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of noreply@blogcritics.org) smtp.mail=noreply@blogcritics.org
Received: from bcweb03.blogcritics.org (bcweb03.technorati.com [10.12.113.122])
by mail01.technorati.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2BC3219BCE9
for ; Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by bcweb03.blogcritics.org (Postfix, from userid 503)
id 2192416C116; Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
To: list.andy@gmail.com
Subject: State of the Blogosphere Survey/Changes to Your Technorati Authority
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 20:57:02 -0700
From: No Reply
Message-ID: <1484669ea94992dffb014142837dd930@blogcritics.org>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer [version 1.73]
X-Mailer: PHPlist v2.10.2
X-MessageID: 261
X-ListMember: list.andy@gmail.com
Precedence: bulk

However you could easily blame this all on Gmail as here are a bunch of other legitimate emails I pulled out of spam during the same session.

Emails That Headers Could Possibly Be Improved

Comment subscriptions from Copyblogger

Comment subscriptions from Disqus

Emails With Good SPF

Google’s own Google Groups emails (Note: I don’t open those very often that could negatively affect delivery)

A change in Plaxo Terms of Service… I wouldn’t have known about

Forum updates from one of my hosts, VPS.net

Dr Mike Woo Ming isn’t phishing… that I know of, and all the links in this email seem legit… and his headers seem to be in order from my layman perspective.

Technorati’s solution would be to use an email service provider who has good delivery. One suitable option might be Getresponse’s “Deda” Service.

That isn’t an affiliate link (no deep linking support) but who knows, if you mention my blog post maybe they will allocate a sale to me.

That being said, no email service provider’s emails are immune.

Seth Godin using Feedblitz

Jason Potash using Prosender / Aweber whitelabel

Matt Trainer using iContact

Trey Smith & Frank Kern using Infusionsoft

Delivery for people using their own scripts isn’t fairing any better, in most cases much worse.

For email service providers, my unique key whitelisting system would work, and guarantee flawless delivery.

Allow Twitter to Scrape Your Personal Information In Gmail

I have written extensively about the problems associated with Viral Tell-A-Friend systems. People are becoming careless with personal and business security, and soon adding an email and password to a box will be as common as handing over an email address… but with dire consequences.

My opinion, Techcrunch shouldn’t publish what they found in Twitter’s undie drawer… but only with the provision that they remove the hypocritical viral tell-a-friend, and encourage other startups to do the same… until they learn to use APIs correctly.

Dopplr manage  to use APIs for TAF without the massive funding, and Gigya seem to have some API support.

Let something good come of this, and get all major social sites to stop scraping 3rd party accounts as well.

Gmail Spam False Positives

I have to read my spam folder daily, because it gets sometimes 200 spam email messages, and within that may be as many as 5% false positives.

These are emails I want to receive, which I have signed up to receive, I have confirmed a subscription with a full “double opt-in” process, and are from senders I previously had no problems receiving email from.

Some examples are occasional emails from list owners with Aweber – Aweber have only 100% clean opt-in email – if an email is sent from Aweber, I have asked for it, I want to read it, or keep it on file. It is not spam.
Even if a user reports an email from Aweber as spam, it isn’t spam – they should have to unsubscribe like normal people.

There are others, such as our good friends at ientry.com, responsible for WebProNews etc – I want their emails

In the past I have even had problems with my own contact form results ending up in SPAM, but here is the most unusual to date.

Yes that is an email from Google, actually a Google Alert in my spam folder in Gmail.

Advertising positioning

This one is a shout out for all the Awords advertisiers who want reduced click fraud and false clicks.

Maybe this is a rare occasion, but every now and then, especially when going along in a car on a bumpy road (they have bumpy roads here in Poland), I might accidentally click an advert and not the layer with the link to update the email thread.

I hate the thought of those clicks costing someone money.

If it was an Adsense advertisier with that positioning, Google wouldn’t be happy.

Update

It is worth checking out the full update on the Google Gmail blog, and Andy Beal has added a few different problems he encounters.

While you are over at Marketing Pilgrim, don’t forget to check out my competition entry if you missed it, or forgot to Stumble it.

I do try to be responsive to inquiries that I can deal with quickly, so I emailed them straight back, and received the following delivery failure.

Delivered-To: myemailaddressatgoogle@gmail.com
Received: by 10.65.176.15 with SMTP id d15cs319332qbp;
Sat, 3 Nov 2007 08:39:24 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.65.230.9 with SMTP id h9mr8975879qbr.1194104362967;
Sat, 03 Nov 2007 08:39:22 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <>
Received: by 10.65.230.9 with SMTP id h9mr16558173qbr;
Sat, 03 Nov 2007 08:39:22 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <00c09fa00020043e081661211c68c2@googlemail.com>
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem
To: myemailaddressatgoogle@gmail.com
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 08:39:22 -0700 (PDT)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

Legitimate@emailaddresssofpotentialbusinesspartner.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 16): 554 The message was rejected because it contains prohibited virus or spam content

—– Original message —–This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Note:I changed this to a fictitious email address

The headers in the email show that this email was rejected purely by Google, and not the server of the recipient, which is typical of email delivery failure, so for instance when an email is rejected by AOL for whatever reason, e.g. a full mailbox, the message would come from the AOL Postmaster Mail Delivery Subsystem MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com

Spam Email Filtering At Source

I can understand why Gmail prevents the delivery of executable files via email, as that is heavily abused by people looking to hijack innocent people’s computers, but preventing someone responding to a legitimate email enquiry using some poorly tested filter system is totally wrong.

It is down to the recipient as to whether they wish to receive email communication from someone, and not down to Google who or how you communicate with them, and what words you use.

Whilst many will argue that Gmail is a free service, so they can do what they like, they have millions of users who have accepted a “social contract” to use Gmail for free in exchange for viewing advertising along side their email.

Migrating from one email service provider is not an easy choice to make if you have circulated an email address that is specific to one email service provider – you are locked in.

Just to repeat what I mentioned at the start of this email, in case there is any confusion, I was responding to a text based message from my enquiry form, which is used by 10s of people every day. My reply was a 100% text based message of just 2 additional paragraphs, and it was rejected.

If I don’t respond to any emails for the next week, blame it on Google.

Today while pulling an email from the spam folder I was greeted with this message.

This appears to be something newly implemented as Forrester Research were recently talking about problems with filtering.

There also seems to be lots of talk about an offline version of Gmail coming soon, but so far nothing substantial in the rumour mill.

WordPress SEO Tips & Hacks

Subscribe to Comments Hacks – I am including this at the top of the list because it is highly important. Emails sent out from your domain could cause you problems with email delivery or spam complaints, and the plugin by default doesn’t comply with CAN-SPAM if you or someone else (a spammer) includes a marketing message in your emails.
The danger of overloading your server with emails being sent faster than your host allows is also worth thinking about. I know multiple blogs that have problems delivering all subscribed comments and I am sure the owners are not aware of this.

Just imagine you have 20 people comment on a post, and then you get 5 new comments in the space of one hour – that would put you over the limit on most shared hosting.

Mine are set up to be delivered by Gmail by SMTP – which email host is going to block Gmail totally?

Spam Karma latest release, and I also speculated that I get less spam using it than if I was using Akismet.

My Ultimate List of Dofollow Plugins first published in February still gains links on a daily basis, and has helped convert 100s of people into removing nofollow from their comments and trackbacks.
I have a followup project planned that I will launch within the next week that will provide a way of highlighting blogs that wish to be highlighted as supporting DoFollow.
The page also now includes information on how to remove NoFollow from blogs using Blogger and I hope to be able to include detailed Typepad and MoveableType instructions (I know of 3 people working on this)

How linking to social media and bookmarking sites could affect your search engine performance. The discussion that followed on is just as informative as the post.

Tagging and How Tagging Can Help SEO is one of the primary topics of this blog. I have written a lot of posts regarding the benefits of using Ultimate Tag Warrior (that is a link to the tag).
My analysis of the Google BlogSearch Patent didn’t gain a lot of links from SEO blogs, but then most SEO bloggers don’t understand the benefits of tagging and are too worried about duplicate content (another tag link)

Do you get linked to by the press? I also highlighted how bad some press agencies are with linking.

My attack on Top Commenters plugins caused some uproar. It is great to provide a way to thank the people who comment on your blog, but I prefer to do that by using DoFollow.
If you can understand my milk bottle analogy, you will go a long way to improving the SEO profile of your blog. If you do use a Top Commenters plugin, at least include it using some WordPress logic functions such as is_home() and is_single()

Top WordPress Plugins

I will be opening up the voting for the first round of my cash donations for best wordpress plugins later today (I need to decide which plugin or service to use). I am giving away real money in large chunks to help support WordPress Plugin Development.

Monetization & Blogging Tips

Warning about using Amazon Contextual Links

PayPerPost vs Jason Calacanis turned into an in depth discussion regarding ThisNext vs PayPerPost on Disclosure (you really have to read the comments)

Performancing Metrics Is a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing for Niche Website owners and why I recommend Clicky instead.

I write a lot about disclosure in affiliate marketing and blogging. Whilst PayPerPost is constantly being highlighted, the people doing the highlighting are actually as guilty of poor disclosure and unethical practices themselves.

Maki asked a number of bloggers why they display a feed counter and I gave what I believe is the most in depth answer. There are some good tips there for those people who already have an existing mailing list to jumpstart their blog subscription for an insane amount of social proof.
Why don’t Aweber and Getresponse offer a decent email subscription to RSS feeds that reports numbers to Feedburner? Anyone who uses their services misses out on the social proof benefit.
They should also offer their own social proof icons for email subscriptions.

In some ways I hate product launch formula style marketing of services. The scarcity factor makes it hard for a potential buyer to make an informed decision despite all the proof.
Sometimes the materials left over are of huge value, and I recommend you watch the videos from Rich Schefren.

Product Reviews

Stampede Traffic

Sponsored Reviews – with this service you can negotiate with me for paid reviews :)

Volusion Shopping Cart – was I too harsh on them?
Auction Ads

Web 2.0

Is this the Future of MyBlogLog when we finally get an API? Smart internet marketers should already be planning on how the data could be best integrated into other applications.

Tips on using Reddit and Stumbleupon. The StumbleUpon post lists my membership details to a number of social networks… lets be friends. I really should include those in my sidebar.

Sometimes it is amazing the knock-on effect of what you blog about.

My How To Use MyBlogLog post sent Cord some traffic, but the important factor is the quality of traffic sent. Eric from MyBlogLog saw the post, read Cord’s 2 part guide, and then listed it on the MyBlogLog blog, along with some more tips.

I wrote a fair amount about Twitter, partially because it was the talk of the blogosphere, and partially because as with all emerging technology, there were a lot of ethical problems in using it for commercial use. The best way to read full coverage is to use my Twitter tag.

I love Technorati, but they really have problems coping with all the new kinds of RSS and micro blog services such as Twitter, and co.Comment

I had some Digg success earlier in the month, with a story I submitted to Digg actually reaching the front page. The discussion is well worth reading with some insight from Michel Fortin and others.

I have always been attracted to the Subscribe-to-Comments plugin, but at the same time installing it has always filled me with dread. Whilst it can be a great community building aid, and a useful tool for regular visitors who like to interact, it can be a liability.

There are 2 aspects of subscribe to comments that present a danger to a successful business blog

• Email Flow Control
• Legal compliance with CAN SPAM and SI (3429 of 2006)

Email Flow Control

By default, the wp_mail() function of WordPress uses PHPs mail() function, a way of sending instant emails from your server. Unfortunately, most popular hosts have restrictions on how many emails can be sent from your server over 24hrs, and it is very typical for there to be an hourly limit as well.
As an example, here are the Hostgator policy for email delivery:-

There is a 200 hourly email limit per domain this limit is also applied towards mailman. If you send over this amount in any hour most of the e-mails will bounce back with a undeliverable error.

They also suggest one email every 6 seconds – unfortunately if 50 people have subscribed to comments, one new comment sends 50 emails out, which in my opinion is quite worrying.

Most hosts have PHPMailer installed, or available for installation, and you could try your luck using wpPHPmailer plugin, though this seems to be unsupported these days (1 year+ and no reply from developer in the support thread) – support for PHPMailer has actually just been added to WPMU. PHPmailer itself hasn’t been updated in a long time, thus I am slightly hesitant to use it, though I am not technical enough to give a reason for my pessimistic stance.

Swift Mailer & the ShiftThis SMTP Mailer Plugin are the alternative that we are going to use instead, and both are actively supported.

ShiftThis SMTP Mailer Plugin

Installing this plugin is actually extremely easy, as long as you don’t disappear off in the wrong direction. The plugin comes with Swift Mailer already in a sub-folder.
You don’t need to visit the Swift Mailer site at all. If you are not extremely technical, you could waste hours, if not days digging around the Swift Mailer site, and then the the various testing applications. None of that is needed.

Installation:

Download plugin
Extract plugin
Copy / Upload to your normal plugin folder

Configuration:

You could set it up to use your local SMTP server – that would then however count towards how many emails you are sending from your domain, which might not be an ideal situation.

You could also set things up to use Gmail – I can actually think of all kinds of benefits to using Gmail for your SMTP, though if a site is a company site, you might want to use one of the upgraded Google offerings. Also take a look at this old Lifehacker article. You will also have to decide whether you really want your sent email within Gmail to fill up with comments being posted to your blog.

Currently the code doesn’t seem to support the email flow control plugin of Swift Mailer, but if you are using Gmail for SMTP this might not be a problem. I have submitted a message on the support forums to see if this can be integrated with some easy to understand flow controls.

Legal compliance with CAN SPAM and SI (3429 of 2006)

I should note:-

• I am not a lawyer, and the wording I have used was not written by a lawyer
• You should check with your legal consultant and this is provided for entertainment purposes only

No matter how effective your spam controls and how restrictive your comments policy, commercial email messages can get through, and a subscribed email recipient could just as easily claim “this is spam” for a comment subscription as they would for a mailing list.

It is quite common for people engaged in internet marketing to use an email service such as Get Response or Aweber to ensure delivery of their emails, and to protect against spam complaints.

This solution isn’t necessarily going to help with email delivery, but at least offer some “cover your a$$” protection should you happen to receive a complaint.

Whilst elsewhere I have been challenged to provide conclusive proof that you should take precautions with any aspect of your email usage, I am not going to offer that in this write up.
You may well look on this as scare tactics and FUD.

It is your choice based on your own research and the legal advice you have received whether you think emails being sent from your domain which are not totally under your control could represent a problem.
I honestly don’t know if Safe Harbour rules might apply to email delivery. I don’t know of any blog owner who has had problems either from a legal perspective, or with their hosting or domain registrars, but then I personally only know a few people who have been killed in car accidents – I know a lot more people who drive cars than publish business blogs.

Subscribe To Comments Hack

This is just a hack. I decided to offer a hack for those concerned and don’t intend to offer a patched file. Ideally Subscribe To Comments should offer an interface in the options to allow various additional messages to be added to outgoing email messages. This wouldn’t necessarily just have to be legal information, it could also include additional advertising.

Around line 600 I have added the following:-

[PHP]
$message .= __(“\n\nWarning: Emails generated from comment subscriptions may contain commercial messages. Whilst every attempt has been taken to eliminate comment spam, the content should not be regarded as approved by the blog owner\n”, ‘subscribe-to-comments’);
$message .= __(“Keedz Ltd – Registered in England & Wales: 05906883\n”, ‘subscribe-to-comments’);
$message .= __(“Registered Address: 71 Bexley High St, Bexley, Kent DA5 1AA +48(62)7382438\n”, ‘subscribe-to-comments’);
[/PHP]

Conclusion

As stated this is all for entertainment purposes.

If you are concerned with emails being sent out from your blog, and how they are controlled, making these changes might take you anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. Once you get the hang of it, making the changes on multiple blogs will take just a few minutes, especially if you create a hacked version of the plugin that is suitable for all your web properties.

My own personal belief is it is worth dotting the legal “i”s, and crossing the “t”s if you are serious about your online business. I still have a few I need to handle.

Maybe one day the email mailing list services will offer a host of additional services for bloggers, including adding commenters to mailing lists and providing a safe, monitored email gateway.

I am not a lawyer, and the following is for entertainment purposes only

There are a lot of things stacked up against Google:-

• Why didn’t they register it first, plus gmail.com.pl as well – yep Google don’t seem to own that domain either
• Gmail seems to be just a trademark, not a registered trademark
• Poland is in Europe, and Google have already had problems with the UK and Germany. Google does not have prior claim to the term Gmail in Europe, thus the Gmail trademark owners in those countries might have more claim than Google to the trademark.
• They are going to have to fight this “away from home”

Google are geting very bad press over this in Poland already, such as this article on Gazeta.pl

przez ponad dwa lata spółka nie wykazywało zainteresowania kupnem domeny gmail.pl (podobnie zresztą jak i w innych krajach), co mogłoby sugerować, że e-maili z polską końcówką nie zamierza oferować. Czy teraz zmieniła zdanie?

Rough translation: For over 2 years the company didn’t show any interest in buying the domain gmail.pl (just like the other countries), which could suggest that they didn’t intend to offer the email service with the Polish top level domain. Have they now changed their minds?

Grupą Młodych Artystów i Literatów (GMAiL) are probably enjoying the publicity, although they should think about offering some English language pages for the 1000s of visitors this story will bring them.

I am very disappointed in the AFP coverage on Yahoo news. They didn’t include a live link to the site even though they had multiple quotations.

The Guardian did link through to the domain, and questions Google’s “Don’t Be Evil”, and so do Digital Inspiration, and Profy.

With domain disputes it is normal to follow the procedures dictated by the regional domain registrars, which generally conform to ICANN procedures.

In Poland the national registrar is NASK.

Domain names in Poland are a lot more expensive than in the US or UK, here are NASKs current prices.

If you wanted to compare apples and oranges, for a typical Polish worker that is the equivalent of more than $500 to register a domain, as compared to domain cost in the US and typical income.

NASK conveniently have their policies and rules available in English.

DISPUTE RESOLUTION
14. In the event of a third party filing to the Arbitration Court at the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunication in Warsaw (hereafter “the Arbitration Court”) a motion against the subscriber demanding to desist the infringement of his rights resulting from the registration of a domain name, the subscriber shall accede to the negotiation proceeding described in the Rules of the Arbitration Court. If the subscriber and the third party fail to reach a settlement, the subscriber shall deliver to the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunication a signed arbitration clause within a time limit set in summons to sign the arbitration clause.
15. Failure to sign the clause described in the preceding section shall result in (in the order indicated):
a. suspension in the possibility of using the domain name, effective after 30 days from the expiration of the time limit set for signing the clause,
b. termination of the contract within 3 months of the expiration of the time limit set for signing the clause.
16. Disputes, in which both parties are registered or resident outside the Republic of Poland, are resolved by the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center pursuant to the WIPO Expedited Arbitration Rules for Domain Name Dispute Resolution under .PL (the Rules). The provision of the Rules regarding the parties’ Arbitration Agreement applies when the dispute is to be resolved by the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center.
17. If NASK is informed about existing dispute concerning a domain name, any changes of the subscriber of the domain name, shall be suspended until the dispute is resolved.
18. NASK shall execute a court award resolving the dispute between a subscriber and a third party concerning a domain name. In the case of award declaring infringement by a subscriber of third party rights resulting from the registration of an Internet domain name, the contract is terminated as of the date when the award becomes in force.

Unlike similar rules for .com, .net and .info that I have read from US registrars, there doesn’t seem to be an option to fight this in the courts rather than arbitration. Google have an office in Poland, thus they probably have to act as a Polish entity. They probably don’t class as a foreign party under the 16th clause.

New rules come into effect on the 18th March 2007 and those mention court decisions.

A legally valid decision of an arbitration court or the common court stating that the Subscriber has infringed a third party’s rights shall be a basis for the termination of the Agreement by the NASK with that Subscriber without the period of termination.

These changes might be the reason that this dispute is being handled now, and not in a few months time.

More on Techmeme

Clown Picture Credit: Designed With A T (modified from original)

Yesterday I happened upon something maybe of significance when I spotted Nick Baum who is the project manager for Google Reader had created an account on MyBlogLog for his private blog. It should be noted that he doesn’t discuss Google matters on his private blog.

I did however drop him a question via the MyBlogLog message system.

Nick did answer that message in private, but I couldn’t publish the answer yesterday because it was a private message, and might well have jumped the gun on an official announcement.

From the Google Reader Blog

Publishers have been asking us to report the number of users that are subscribed to their feeds in Google Reader. This is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, but with all the products that use feeds at Google, corralling the data in one place was like herding cats. So herd we did, and as of today, our crawler reports the number of Google users subscribed to the feed. The count includes subscribers from Google Reader and the Google Personalized Homepage, and in the future may include other Google products that support feeds.

Great… wonderful… amazing news – thanks Google Reader team!

Now for Some Speculation

You might notice I bolded the following:-

and in the future may include other Google products that support feeds

This is pure speculation, but 2007 has just started and a lot is possible.

• Blogger – Google already have avatars for Blogger accounts, but don’t have a much of a social network wrapped around Blogger interaction. Even WordPress.com have much better “community” between their bloggers with shared tag feeds and various dashboard features.
• Google Personalized Homepage – this doesn’t have any form of sharing yet, unlike Pageflakes or Netvibes
• Google Talk – allows you to set an avatar to be displayed
• Google Co-op CSE – Again, you can join as an editor of a Google Co-op search engine and it will display your avatar
• Gmail allows you to set an avatar



• YouTube – Yes Google already own one social network, but it isn’t yet fully integrated with the multitude of other Google services – login at YouTube isn’t yet unified – I wonder how far that is from becoming a reality
• Google Video – currently no social features
• Personal Search – Would Google ever provide users with the ability to share what they have been search for to friends and family – yes I know there are privacy concerns, depending on what you search for ;) – you could have an option “share this search”
• Google Reader Shared Feeds – I don’t share items, because I don’t support the fact that publishers don’t have a choice about their full content being shared. Snippets isn’t a problem, as long as there will be a way to warn you before you share private information you might subscribe to.
• Groups – Google Groups are not really integrated very well with your online experience and either you have to fill up your mailbox with unwanted emails, or you have to make a concious decision to visit.
• Picassa – You can share your photos, but again it is something separate from other Google Services
• Google Documents – lots of sharing possible
• Google Calendar – you can share your calendar, and this is one of the strongest features, but it is not well integrated with other services

Yahoo are looking strongly at integration of services. They have APIs for most of their social services, have just released Yahoo Pipes, and they purchased MyBlogLog.

Google does provide a lot of “behind the scenes” APIs for services, and it is possible to create a mashup service if you trust someone else with your Google account info – I wouldn’t personally share my Google account info with anyone – well my wife can retrieve my password if required, though she doesn’t have that need currently.
I didn’t list private services such as Adwords, Adsense and Analytics – maybe those could become a more private portal. It would certainly be useful to merge the data with more than just a hack.

Google is Missing Glue

You know… that substance that joins things together… and makes them sticky.

Google seem to be keeping very quiet about social network plans. Googlers have always been very good at keeping secrets, and have extreme job loyalty. I would think the majority of people who have left employment at Google over the last few years probably did so because they will probably never have to work again or for health reasons. Yes some people whose company has been acquired eventually leave, but financial security does allow a few entrepreneurial freedoms.

My prediction – sometime during 2007 Google will announce a major social networking platform that provides the glue between all their vast array of services.