Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) several important announcements today including the appointment of Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) to its board of directors, the establishment of its Project Zero, and the ending of real name policy on Google+ as well as its partnership with Novartis AG (ADR) (NYSE:NVS) to develop smart glucose tracking contact lens.
Google’s Project Zero to address zero-day vulnerabilities
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) established Project Zero, team composed of security researches dedicated in improving internet security. According to Chris Evans, one of the security experts of the search engine giant, their objective is to significantly reduce the number of people harmed by targeted attacks.”
Evans emphasized that Project Zero will address “zero-day” vulnerabilities, which are used in sophisticated attacks on human rights activists or industrial espionage. They will also focus on other security issues on third-party software affecting Google products and services as well as its users.
“We commit to doing our work transparently. Every bug we discover will be filed in an external database. We will only report bugs to the software’s vendor—and no third parties. Once the bug report becomes public (typically once a patch is available), you’ll be able to monitor vendor time-to-fix performance, see any discussion about exploitability, and view historical exploits and crash traces, said Evans.
He added, “We also commit to sending bug reports to vendors in as close to real-time as possible, and to working with them to get fixes to users in a reasonable time.” Furthermore, he stated that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is hiring security researchers to join Project Zero.
Google makes Google+ more inclusive
The search engine giant also decided to abolish its policy requiring users to use their real name on Google+ after more than three years since launching its social network service.
In a blog post, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOG) explained that it implemented a lot of restrictions on its policy to help create a community composed of real people, but a number of people who wants to join without using their real names were excluded.
The search engine giant relaxed its strict policy over the years by giving users an option to use any name on YouTube to be displayed on Google+. Today, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (GOOGL) decided to completely remove the real name policy on the service.
“We know you’ve been calling for this change for a while. We know that our names policy has been unclear, and this has led to some unnecessarily difficult experiences for some of our users. For this we apologize, and we hope that today’s change is a step toward making Google+ the welcoming and inclusive place that we want it to be,” according to the search engine giant.
