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Project Shield

projectshield.withgoogle.com

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Re: Project Shield

#2
Serious question: what happens if say Wikileaks or Snowden or the next important whistleblower uses this service, and then the head of DHS, FBI, DOJ, etc (not a Court) "gives a call" to Google? Will Google "protect their free expression", or comply with the order within hours, like Amazon did [1]?

Google may have great lawyers and a lot of money, but what if they tell them "hey, you know that tax-free money you're sending to the Bermuda [2]? Yeah, FTC will be knocking on your door tomorrow to ask you about that".

So I guess what I want to know is if Google will actually stand their ground and protect their users till the end by doing the right thing, or they'll "compromise" if the potential cost to their business is too great. Maybe in the past it was easy to believe Google would actually do the right thing, but it's becoming increasingly harder to believe that.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-websi...

[2] http://www.cnbc.com/id/101104483

Re: Project Shield

#3
post #2

Serious question: what happens if say Wikileaks or Snowden or the next important whistleblower uses this service, and then the head of DHS, FBI, DOJ, etc (not a Court) "gives a call" to Google? Will Google "protect their free expression", or comply with the order within hours, like Amazon did [1]? Google may have great lawyers and a lot of money, but what if they tell them "hey, you know that tax-free money you're se…

Probably handle the TOS violation/comply with the law just like Amazon did with Wikileaks previously.

Re: Project Shield

#4
post #2

Serious question: what happens if say Wikileaks or Snowden or the next important whistleblower uses this service, and then the head of DHS, FBI, DOJ, etc (not a Court) "gives a call" to Google? Will Google "protect their free expression", or comply with the order within hours, like Amazon did [1]? Google may have great lawyers and a lot of money, but what if they tell them "hey, you know that tax-free money you're se…

Google has been pretty explicit about the circumstances in which it will hand user data over to governments or law enforcement. Even if it is required to be done in secret (e.g. a NSL or FISA request), it still requires a valid court order or other legal process.

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests

If you think any U.S.-based company is able to do better, I'd love to hear how.

Re: Project Shield

#5
NVidia already has something named Project Shield -- although it has nothing to do with this. Wonder if this is confusing enough for a trademark case.

Re: Project Shield

#7
Seems like its just a straight up competitor to Cloudflare. There doesn't' appear to be any direct revenue gain from this, maybe this is more of a mafia protection kinda thing (as in protecting its interests, the websites hosting its ads).

Does anyone know what it takes to mitigate DDoS, at this kind of scale?

Re: Project Shield

#8

NVidia already has something named Project Shield -- although it has nothing to do with this. Wonder if this is confusing enough for a trademark case.

There is Blue Shield (medical insurance company) in US

Re: Project Shield

#10

Seems like its just a straight up competitor to Cloudflare. There doesn't' appear to be any direct revenue gain from this, maybe this is more of a mafia protection kinda thing (as in protecting its interests, the websites hosting its ads). Does anyone know what it takes to mitigate DDoS, at this kind of scale?

I see big time indirect revenue - with all of a sites actions/users moving through Google, they can gather way more (potentially private) information about a user - all the better to sell targeted ads on. Call me cynical, but that was the first thing I thought of when I saw this.
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