Google exec: We won't break users' trust

After concerns over a revamped Google privacy policy surfaced last month, some questioned whether the Web giant is still living up to its longstanding motto: "Don't be evil."

Absolutely, says Vic Gundotra, the man behind social network Google+. The company has to. "If we do things that are evil, with one click you can leave Google," Gundotra said on the opening day of the South by Southwest Interactive festival on Friday. "If we break the users' trust, we can lose to competitors very quickly."

Under the policy, which went into effect on March 1, Google doesn't collect any more information about users than it did before. But all of that data, from tools like Gmail, Google search, YouTube and Android mobile devices, is now compiled into a single profile of each user's habits.

Privacy watchdogs, including some members of Congress and dozens of state attorneys general, have expressed concerns the policy is too invasive.

Gundotra said Google+ is an important part of the "new Google" that will use those profiles to provide more relevant services (advertisements were the ones that came up again and again) across the company's many platforms.

Before, he said, Google products were developed in "silos," unable to share information with each other.

"There are some things Google could have done better," he said. "If we could build a common notion of your identity and your relationships, we thought, we could make Google better."

For example, he said, on Google+ user could "+1" (the site's equivalent of a "like") a restaurant. Months later, a friend could be using Google search to find a restaurant in the same area and discover it as a recommendation of sorts.

Gundotra, a senior vice-president for engineering at Google, also used his "fireside chat" with tech writer and Alltop.com co-founder Guy Kawasaki to defend the success of Google+.

Last month, Web analytics firm comScore released a report saying that Google+ users averaged just 3.3 minutes on the site for the entire month of January. That came just weeks after Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced the site had hit 90 million users -- up from 40 million in October.

"Google+ is a social layer across all of Google's services," Gundotra said.

Gundotra said the site now has 100 million "30-day actives." But when pressed by Kawasaki for a definition, he said that's people who log in to Google+, then use one of Google's many other products within a month.

So, then, not only does Google+ plus have dramatically fewer than the more than 800 million users Facebook claims, but that return rate doesn't even mean people actually came back to Google+?

Gundotra said it's not legitimate to only study Google+ return visits as a measure of the network's success.

"That's counting only one aspect," he said. "We think that's crazy."

Instead of a Facebook-like standalone network, Google+ works to make all of the Google universe social, he said

That didn't stop him taking a thinly veiled jab at Facebook when asked about allowing developers to create third-party content on Google+ (Think FarmVille, Spotify or Pinterest).

Google has been slow to do so. Gundotra said he wants to make sure the months-old service's programming system is ready before opening it up to outside developers. In contrast, he suggested, Facebook has made several sweeping changes to its interface, sometimes forcing developers to start over from scratch.

"I'm going to release that (programming interface) when I know we're not going to screw over developers," he said. "We hold ourselves to a higher standard. Sometimes that means restraint.

Countering the Google Plus Image Problem

Google has a bit of an image problem.

For people peering in, Google Plus, Google’s latest attempt at social media, has been a ghost town. Some say it is a desolate wasteland that is used only by, well, Google employees and a few Google faithful.

Yet internally, Google says that Google Plus is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or cars that can drive themselves. It says Google Plus is the quickest-growing product the company has ever built.

“Not only is Google Plus not a ghost town,” Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president for engineering, said in an interview at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, “we have never seen anything grow this fast. Ever.”

In response to the public perception of Google Plus, the company said it has decided to share some of the user numbers for Google Plus. About 50 million people who have created a Google Plus account actively use the company’s Google Plus-enhanced products daily, Mr. Gundotra said. Over a 30-day period, he said, that number is 100 million active users.

This is where the image problem gets a little bit blurry.

Although these numbers sound impressive, the catch is that Google Plus-enhanced properties include YouTube, the Android Marketplace and Google.com, the company’s flagship search engine. Yet Google contends that these numbers illustrate that more than 100 million people have signed up for a Google Plus account and are now actively engaging with Google Plus-related products across the company.

In a view from outside the company, a report released last month by ComScore, the market research firm, says Google Plus users spend about three minutes a month on the social network. By comparison, ComScore says that people spend an average 405 minutes a month on Facebook, the service Google Plus is trying to displace.

Although Google did not share the amount of time people spend on Google Plus, the company said numbers did not illustrate what was really happening at Google.

“This is just the next version of Google,” Mr. Gundotra said, noting that he sees Google Plus as a social blanket that envelopes the entire Google experience. “Everything is being upgraded. We already have users. We’re now upgrading them to what we consider Google 2.0.”

In Google’s eyes, citing the amount of time people spend on Google Plus would be like judging a takeout restaurant by how many people sit down to eat at a table, even though a number of people take food to go.

But Nate Elliott, a vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research, said the numbers just are not adding up correctly.

“I don’t know how you can have a social layer without having a social network that people use,” Mr. Elliott said in a phone interview. “If Google is saying that someone who once signed up for Google Plus makes them an active user, then that’s not entirely convincing.”

Mr. Elliott said that although there were pockets of people using Google’s social network, its use did not come close to that of Facebook or Twitter. Google Plus “looks like Facebook from one year ago,” he said.

Google cited advertising as a prime example of the success of Google Plus. Mr. Gundotra said that any advertisement on Google that has a “social annotation” to it, specifically someone who has clicked the +1 button on an ad, is experiencing a drastic increase in engagement.

“We are seeing 5 to 10 percent click-through-rate uplift on any ad that has a social annotation on our own Web sites,” Mr. Gundotra said. ”We have been in this business for a long time, and there are very few things that give you a 5 to 10 percent increase on ad engagement.”

Mr. Gundotra said Google Plus-enriched ads differentiated Google from social competitors, as the company can now deliver a “socially enhanced ad at the time of intent” rather than an ad placed randomly in a social stream. For example, when someone searches for a microwave, Google can deliver an ad for a microwave that has been suggested by people in a user’s Google Plus Circles.

Realistically, the debate over how many people use Google Plus, how many real users it has, or how long they spend clicking little +1 buttons on Google properties, seems almost irrelevant. Google is determined to make Google Plus work at all costs, even in the face of naysayers.

Or as Mr. Gundotra put it, ”We have started the social engines at Google and we’re about to step on the gas.”

Back Up Your Google Data with CloudPull

Do you trust Google? Let me rephrase that. Assuming that you trust Google sufficiently to use their services — Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, and Google Reader — do you trust Google not to lose your data? It’s a legitimate question to ask of any cloud-based service, and it’s especially important to ask of those services that are free and lack official support.

As with any discussion of backup, it’s important to consider all possible sources of problems. Personally, I don’t worry much about my data at Google — I believe that Google is exercising all due diligence to ensure that nothing disappears due to hardware or software failure. But all that data is protected by nothing more than a password, and it could be stolen or cracked by some nefarious character. James Fallows wrote movingly about his wife’s Gmail account being taken over; the attacker deleted six years’ worth of correspondence — over 4 GB of stored messages and attachments that wasn’t backed up (Google was able to recover it in the end).

Don’t discount human error, too, either your own or programmer error. It’s not inconceivable that you could become confused and accidentally delete a calendar or document, either directly or within some utility software that provides access to your data on Google.

Backing Up the Cloud -- For peace of mind, therefore, a backup is necessary. But traditional backup programs protect the data on your hard disk, not data hosted in Google’s data centers. You can sync certain types of cloud data, such as email, calendars, and contacts, by pointing Apple Mail at Gmail, iCal at Google Calendar, and Address Book at Google Contacts. But for other types of data — most notably documents in Google Docs — none of Apple’s programs can help. Plus, as noted just above, synchronization can be dangerous, since actions on your Mac can result in data being deleted on Google.

The solution is CloudPull 2.0, from Golden Hill Software, which does exactly what you’d want from a Google-focused cloud backup program, downloading all your data from Google using read-only APIs over a secure https connection. The 1.x version of CloudPull supports Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, and Google Reader, and the just-released 2.0 version adds support for Gmail. (The 2.0 version has a few other welcome features, but since it works only with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Golden Hill Software will be maintaining CloudPull 1.5 for those who need to use it under 10.6 Snow Leopard.)

CloudPull stores backed-up data in common, easily readable formats, which means the following:

• Gmail: Email messages are stored in .emlx format, suitable for importing into Apple Mail. CloudPull maintains Gmail labels, which can be dragged from the sidebar to the Desktop and later imported into Apple Mail as mailboxes.

• Google Calendar: Calendars are stored as .ics files and can be imported into iCal if necessary. (Individual events aren’t accessible on their own.)

• Google Contacts: Contacts are stored as .vcf files that you can add to Address Book. Groups are maintained within CloudPull but can’t be exported in their entirety.

• Google Docs: CloudPull converts documents into appropriate Microsoft Office formats, so word processing documents become Word documents, spreadsheets and forms become Excel documents, and presentations become PowerPoint documents. Drawings turn into .png files and documents of other types in Google Docs retain their original formats.

• Google Reader: Subscriptions and starred articles are retained as .inetloc bookmark files that open in Safari.

What’s more, for document types (everything in Google Docs, calendars, and contacts) that can be changed online, CloudPull downloads and maintains multiple versions as independent documents so you can always go back to an earlier state of a document.

Using CloudPull -- Setting up and using CloudPull is simple. A pair of first launch dialogs collect your Google Account credentials and let you specify which Gmail labels you want to include in your backup. Before you configure this second dialog, make sure your Gmail IMAP settings are correct.

In the second dialog, it’s easiest to select all labels, but it might be worth thinking about whether there are certain labels, such as those associated with mailing lists you used to read years ago, that you really don’t need to back up. And remember, since messages in Gmail can have multiple labels, just because you deselect a particular label doesn’t mean that the message won’t be matched by some other label.

With that configuration out of the way, CloudPull connects to Google and starts downloading your data. This will take some time — perhaps an entire day, depending on how many documents you have in Google Docs and how much email in Gmail. While that’s happening, take a few minutes to check out CloudPull’s preferences.

You can change your Google Account settings (double-click your email address to work through the two first launch dialogs again) or add another account. I’ll probably back up Tristan’s Google account onto my Mac with CloudPull, along with my own, since it would be a very bad thing if something were to happen to his homework files in Google Docs at the wrong time.

Another interesting option is how long to keep snapshots and outdated backups — 30 days, 90 days, 1 year, or indefinitely. You can choose whether to show deleted files, and if CloudPull should run as a background app to get it out of the Dock and application switcher; its menu bar icon then becomes the primary interface. It’s also possible to set how often CloudPull backs up (from every hour to once per day) and where it stores backups (in ~/Library/Application Support/CloudPull/backups by default). Finally, exclusion rules enable you to exclude specific items from your backup based on name and kind.

Once CloudPull has completed its initial backup, it watches your Google account for changes on the schedule you’ve set, bringing down new and changed data as necessary. Most people will just leave CloudPull running in the background at that point. It launches at startup by default, and you’ll want to let it do that in most situations.

Backups are useful only if you can restore data from them, though, and that’s where you’ll eventually interact with CloudPull. It offers a single iTunes-like window with a sidebar containing collections for each type of backed-up data; the items in each collection appear as a list in the main pane of the window. In CloudPull 1.x, a right-hand pane showed the history of the file; in CloudPull 2.0, the history is available as a popover that you call up by Control-clicking the item and choosing History of... from the contextual menu. The new approach is a bit clumsier, but realistically, it’s so unlikely that you’ll need to use it that burying it in the interface makes sense.

Quick Look (available by pressing the Space bar or clicking the Quick Look button in the toolbar) lets you preview items in CloudPull’s window, and you can double-click them to open them in the associated program (see the bullet list above for details).

Opening items shouldn’t be done willy-nilly. For data types that import, like email, calendars, and contacts, CloudPull hands the data off instantly, which may add data to iCloud or Address Book in undesirable way. For document data types, CloudPull opens the file in the associated program, but read-only, so you can’t make changes without first saving a copy. A better approach is to drag items out of CloudPull’s window to the Desktop, which “restores” them in a more controlled fashion, after which you can import or open the item as you wish.

Although you will most likely want to restore the latest version of backed-up items, or an older version of a particular item, the new snapshot feature in CloudPull 2.0 shows the state of your Google-based data at a particular point in time. It seems mostly useful if there’s a data corruption event that you don’t notice right away, such that you want to restore data other than the latest version.

Frankly, CloudPull does exactly what it promises, and provides a welcome local backup of Google-hosted cloud data. I have no particular criticisms, apart from preferring the more-colorful sidebar in the 1.5 version in Snow Leopard to the near-monochromatic look in the 2.0 version in Lion. I would like to see CloudPull support other cloud services in the future, such as those from Yahoo and Microsoft, but perhaps Golden Hill Software is planning that for CloudPull 3.0.

CloudPull 2.0 is available at an introductory price for $24.99, either from Golden Hill Software directly or from the Mac App Store. If you use Google Docs heavily, or don’t currently have a good IMAP-based backup of your Gmail account, I encourage you to buy a copy right away. But a 30-day demo is available, so if you’re at all on the fence, you can give CloudPull a try and get at least a month of snapshots locally.

New 'Google Play' store launches

How Google Play stacks up against iTunes & iCloud

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On the eve of Apple’s much-hyped iPad HD event, Google has fired a shot right at Apple when it comes to media with its new Google Play store.

Google Play will smartly combine all of Google’s other stores like the Android Market and Google Music into one cloud-based marketplace for all media needs. Just like iTunes, Google Play will be consumers’ one-stop shop for movies, games, music, apps, and more https://play.google.com/store

And similar to Apple’s iCloud (and Amazon for that matter), Google says Play will ensure that all your purchased media is backed up so you don’t have to worry about losing those files again. You can re-download your files across all platforms if you ever move or lose them. Plus, you’ll be able to store up to 20,000 songs for free, a feature borrowed from the departed Google Music.

However, iCloud also offers more in the way of dealing with your already owned music with its iTunes Match service. With it, you can listen your already owned music from other sources across your iOS devices.

From playing with Google Play today, it appears to offer a relatively smooth experience for browsing and buying media. Unlike iTunes, Play is completely accessible through the browser instead of through a locally stored program. After toying around with it, I wish there was a way to browse and buy media from Apple through the browser as well.

As for selection itself, Apple is still chiefly king with iTunes, especially when it comes to music. Every mainstream artist and most independent artists make it a priority to have their music on iTunes but not Google. As Google Play evolves and becomes known as the destination for media on Android devices especially, it could eventually catch up to iTunes.

When it comes to music pricing, Play appears to offer downloads at the same price or slightly cheaper than iTunes. Popular albums Talk That Talk (Deluxe Edition) by Rihanna and Jay-Z/Kanye West’s Watch the Throne were both slightly cheaper from Google. For movies, Google Play offers just movie rentals, whereas iTunes offers rentals and digital purchases. Movie rentals appear to cost about the same using both services.

We’d encourage you to give Google Play a spin as well. Let us know in the comments if you like it and how you think it stacks up to iTunes.

Google “Search Plus Your World” To Launch Beyond US? Likely, As Secure Search Set To Expand

Google has announced that by default, it will begin encrypting search beyond Google.com in the coming weeks. Since the reason Google uses secure search is primarily to enable its “Search Plus Your World” personalized results, this means SPYW is likely to expand beyond the US. It also means that search marketers can expect the percentage of “not provided” data they see to greatly increase.

Secure Search = Search Plus Your World

Last October, Google changed things so that anyone logged into Google.com would be searching through a secure connection. That was positioned as a move to increase privacy. It prevented others from “eavesdropping” on what someone might be searching for.

In January, it became clearer why blocking eavesdropping threats was so important to Google. Google launched its new “Search Plus Your World” service, which potentially generated more searches that might reveal information about particular searchers who could be identified. Secure searching was necessary to prevent very personal searches from being inadvertently revealed.

At launch, Search Plus Your World was only offered to those searching at Google.com and in English. Since secure searching was a precursor to Search Plus Your World, any expansion of secure search can be seen as a harbinger that SPYW will expand.

Where will it come to? From the blog post:

We’re now ready to expand this protection, so over the next few weeks we will begin introducing SSL search beyond google.com to our local domains around the globe.

By “local domains,” Google means country-specific versions of Google, such as google.co.uk (Google UK) or google.fr (Google France) as opposed to Google.com, which is mostly used by those in the US though also available to a worldwide audience.

Chances are, we’ll see Google release Search Plus Your World to country-specific domains with heavy English-speaking audiences (such as the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada), then domains with non-English languages are likely to follow. That’s been the case with some other Google products that have initially started out targeting English speakers using Google.com.

As an aside, Search Plus Your World was down for several hours today. Google tells us it was a temporary bug, and it’s now working again. Google also tells us about any expansion plans:

We’re working to launch Search plus Your World internationally, but have nothing further to announce at the moment. This change is about improving the privacy and security of users’ search results.

Not Provided Withholding To Grow

The change to secure search also meant that Google no longer provided publishers with the search terms someone used to reach their sites, except for ads that publishers and others may have placed. This raised issues ranging from anti-trust implications to hypocrisy the Google cared about privacy up to the point where it hit the company’s bottom line.

The stories below explain this all in more depth, and I’d strongly encourage you to read them:

• Google Puts A Price On Privacy
• 2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers
• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”

Google initially said that publishers would see data withheld for “single-digit” percentages of their Google search-related visits. In short order, plenty of publishers found more than 10% of searches were being withheld. These “not provided” searches, as Google Analytics reports them, will only increase as part of the coming secure search rollout.

Privacy Loophole Remains

The last article in the list above has a section explaining how withholding search term data from non-advertisers still left privacy loopholes. As I wrote:

Today’s change does nothing to change my view that Google needs to revisit the referrer blocking and either make it a block for everyone, including advertisers, or find a better way to filter search terms that get made visibile in various ways.

For all Google’s talk in today’s blog post about how SSL encryption will be expanded beyond Google.com to “increase the privacy and security of your web searches,” it continues to deliberately leave a loophole that benefits itself directly and its paid advertisers. That’s disappointing.

Google offers hackers $1 million to expose Chrome bugs

Google has announced prizes worth one million dollars for exposing bugs and vulnerabilities in their Chrome browser, reports ANI.

According to Google employees Chris Evans and Justin Schuh, it is a “big learning opportunity” for company and the staff. They also discussed in detail the different ways in which one can win the cash after finding flaws in the Chrome browser.

Google would award the top 60,000-dollar prize to those who get success in finding a “Full Chrome exploit” flaw in Chrome.

The 40,000-dollar prize would go to a hacker who finds a “Partial Chrome exploit” flaw or bug in the browser.

Finally, 20,000-dollar consolation prizes will be won by the hackers who expose bugs that affect users of all Internet browsers, and not specifically the Chrome.

Google flexes muscles! Offers prizes for exposing bugs in its Chrome Browser “We will issue multiple rewards per category, up to the 1 million dollar limit, on a first-come-first served basis,” said Chrome Security Team in a blog post.

Winners will also get a Chrome book.

Earlier Facebook also offered incentives to programmers who can help expose bugs.

The social networking giant began giving out "White Hat Bug Bounty Program" Visa cards last year, doling out thousands of dollars to hackers who found flaws and paying them on an exclusive debit card, which can be used just like a credit or ATM card.

Google 'Assistant' Reportedly Will Surpass Siri

Google is said to be working on artificial intelligence technology that could surpass the capabilities of Apple's Siri voice assistant, a development that comes as Apple prepares for a media event at which it could launch the next iteration of its popular iPad tablet.

Google, the Internet search leader, plans to reveal a new "Assistant" product by the fourth quarter of this year, according to a report by TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis, who cited an unnamed source at the company.

The feature will be personalized and make use of Google's data collection regarding how people behave online and will be "less about returning search results and more about accomplishing real-life goals," the report says.

Yet Android users will be quick to point out Google’s operating system has had voice commands for quite a while. Still, Google hasn't done a great job of touting Voice Commands so many people using Android haven't played around with it.

Did you know on your Android smartphone you can tap the microphone in the Google search bar and say "Call (a person’s name) at (home, mobile or office, ect.)" or "Call (business name) in (city state)," and your phone will make the call, no more tapping needed? It's the same with Navigation—just tap the mic and say, "Navigate to (a landmark or address) in (city state)" and Android's brilliant turn-by-turn navigation will launch.

Here's the full rundown of what you can do using Android's Voice Commands.

Even so, Android Voice Commands, at least in their current state, lack the panache of Apple's Siri. In fact, Apple boasts that you can ask Siri to do things without using choppy or difficult-to-remember commands. So instead of saying something like "Record note, pick up shirt from dry cleaner," you could say, "Remind me to pick up my shirt from the dry cleaner."

The beauty of using an Android phone, however, is that Google products simply work better on its own OS compared with on an iPhone. One can only imagine that as Google consolidates individual user data from across its products it will soon be able to better know how it can help you, privacy concerns notwithstanding.

Just think about the many great Google products you might be using: Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Goggles -- Google has a ton of them you could be using. With Google’s privacy policy changes all of those products can now work together to build a more intelligent profile that more accurately reflects what you like, where you go, who you communicate with and what you buy plus untold other metrics surrounding your online behavior.

So could Google squash Siri with a super AI tool that’s supposedly in the works? That’s something you can count on.

Meanwhile, there's a lot of hype surrounding the media event Apple will be holding March 7 as technophiles wait with bated breath to find out if all the rumors swirling about the iPad 3 in the last few months will prove to be true. Will the new tablet really come with an amazing Retina display and 4G connectivity? Will Siri be on board?

California State Senator Pushes for Self-Driving Cars

A California state senator on Thursday said he would introduce a bill Friday that would begin the process for self-driving cars to operate on California roads.

Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) said that he would introduce S-1298, a bill that would direct the California Highway Patrol to develop guidelines for the safe testing and operation of autonomous vehicles in California. The bill mirrors similar legislation introduced in Nevada last year.

Padilla drove to a press conference in a Google-designed self-driving Toyota Prius, the same model that Google has tested on California roads. A Google representative said that the cars have driven 200,000 miles on California roads, so it naturally made sense for Google to lobby the state for their approval.

Google stunned the industry in late 2010 when it disclosed that it not only had developed an autonomous car, but had successfully tested it on public roadways. The cars use a combination of ultra-precise GPS technology plus a rotating dome, which projects a 64-beam infrared laser.

Google's self-driving car also carries other sensors, which include: four radars, mounted on the front and rear bumpers, that allow the car to "see" far enough to be able to deal with fast traffic on freeways; a camera, positioned near the rear-view mirror, that detects traffic lights; and a GPS, inertial measurement unit and wheel encoder, that determine the vehicle's location and keep track of its movements. Google disclosed these details at at a 2011 technology conference, according to Discovery News.

Google also disclosed how Google engineers accompany the cars on the route one or more times so that the car can distinguish pedestrians from mail boxes, apparently in much the same way Google Street View engineers helped map many of the world's roads. That all contributes to the safety of the vehicle.

"The vast majority of vehicle accidents are due to human error. Through the use of computers, sensors and other systems, an autonomous vehicle is capable of analyzing the driving environment more quickly and operating the vehicle more safely," Padilla said. "Autonomous vehicles have the potential to significantly reduce traffic fatalities and improve safety on our roads and highways."

"It was pretty amazing when Google's vehicle went into self-driving mode, Padilla said. "The drive was smooth and safe. It worked flawlessly. It is a testament to human ingenuity and the power of technology in California."

What's next? Presumably, the California CHP would craft rules for the testing and later operation of the self-driving cars, as Nevada recently did. Those rules call for the cars to carry red license plates during testing, then green plates when the cars become operational.

Arizona, Hawaii, Florida and Oklahoma are also considering autonomous vehicle legislation, according to Padilla.

Google Plus Users Spent 3.3 Minutes or 4.95 Million Hours- You Decide

Google plus is creating more ways for you to share content, but is it enough to get people to stay on the sight? New reports are saying that people are using G+ mere minutes per month vs. Facebook which is nearly 8 hours. Does this mean the decline of Google+ or that the new social network is still fighting for its place on the playground? or is this just one way to present the data without giving you a full picture of what is really happening on the site.

When you create an average, a huge influence on the outcome will be the pool from which you are basing your numbers. So the question becomes, is the usage time really dropping or is the pool getting bigger? Lets dig into some basic math to tease this out.

In October there were 40 million users. November usage report said the average use time was 5.1 minutes.

Here is the equation:

We are solving for X. X being the number of minutes spent on the site.

According to a little reverse engineering of the math, and jogging my Algebra brain, in October/November people were spending a total of 204,000,000 minutes on the network or 3.4 million hours.

In January there were 90 million users, so more than double than October, and the average usage was 3.1 minutes.

Lets go ahead and reverse engineer that math as well.

So this means that there were 297,000,000 minutes spent on the network or 4.95 million hours.

So yes the average time spent on the site decreased by 2 minutes. But the total time on the site increased by 46% or 1.55 million hours.

So do I think that Google Plus is on a decline? No. I think that the network has a steeper learning curve than Facebook and with all the new users coming to the site, that it just might take them a little while to get the full hang of it. Lets give the newbies a little bit of time to get use to the new network before we jump to conclusions on the success or failure of Google Plus

Dealing with Google's new privacy policy

If you're amazed — and maybe even a little alarmed — about how much Google seems to know about you, brace yourself. Beginning Thursday, Google will operate under a streamlined privacy policy that enables the Internet's most powerful company to dig even deeper into the lives of its more than 1 users

Google says the changes will make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company to create more helpful and compelling services. Critics, including most of the country's state attorneys general and a top regulator in Europe, argue that Google is trampling on people's privacy rights in its relentless drive to sell more ads.

Here's a look at some of the key issues to consider as Google tries to learn about you

Q: How will Google's privacy changes affect users?

A: Google Inc. is combining more than 60 different privacy policies so it will be able to throw all the data it gathers about each of its logged-in users into personal dossiers. The information Google learns about you while you enter requests into its search engine can be culled to suggest videos to watch when you visit the company's YouTube site.

Users who write a memo on Google's online word processing program, Docs, might be alerted to the misspelling of the name of a friend or co-worker a user has communicated with on Google's Gmail. The new policy pools information from all Google-operated services, empowering the company to connect the dots from one service to the next.

Q: Why is Google making these changes?

A: The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it is striving for a "beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google." What Google hasn't spent much time talking about is how being able to draw more revealing profiles about its users will help sell advertising — the main source of its $38 billion in annual revenue.

One reason Google has become such a big advertising network: Its search engine analyzes requests to figure out which people are more likely to be interested in marketing pitches about specific products and services. Targeting the ads to the right audience is crucial because in many cases, Google only gets paid when someone clicks on an ad link. And, of course, advertisers tend to spend more money if Google is bringing them more customers.

Q: Is there a way to prevent Google from combining the personal data it collects from all its services?

A: No, not if you're a registered user of Gmail, Google Plus, YouTube, or other Google products. But you can minimize the data Google gathers. For starters, make sure you aren't logged into one of Google's services when you're using Google's search engine, watching a YouTube video or perusing pictures on Picasa. You can get a broad overview of what Google knows about you at http://www.google.com/dashboard , where a Google account login is required. Google also offers the option to delete users' history of search activity.

It's important to keep in mind that Google can still track you even when you're not logged in to one of its services. But the information isn't quite as revealing because Google doesn't track you by name, only through a numeric Internet address attached to your computer or an alphanumeric string attached to your Web browser.

Q: Are all Google services covered by the privacy policy?

A: No, a few products, such as Google's Chrome Web browser and mobile payment processor Wallet, will still be governed by separate privacy policies.

Q: Is Google's new privacy policy legal?

A: The company has no doubt about it. That's why it's repeatedly rebuffed pleas to delay the changes since announcing the planned revisions five weeks ago. But privacy activists and even some legal authorities have several concerns.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group, sued the FTC in a federal court in an effort to force the FTC to exercise its powers and block Google's privacy changes. A federal judge ruled the courts didn't have the authority to tell the FTC how to regulate Google. The FTC says it is always looking for evidence that one of its consent orders has been violated.

Earlier this week, the French regulatory agency CNIL warned Google CEO Larry Page that the new policy appears to violate the European Union's strict data-protection rules. Last week, 36 attorneys general in the U.S. and its territories derided the new policy as an "invasion of privacy" in a letter to Page.

One of the major gripes is that registered Google users aren't being given an option to consent to, or reject, the changes, given that they developed their dependence on the services under different rules. In particular, people who bought smartphones running on Google's Android software, and signed two-year contracts to use the devices, may have a tough time avoiding the new privacy policy. They could switch to non-Google services, but those typically don't work as well on Android software. Or they could buy a different smartphone and pay an early-termination penalty.

Q: What regulatory power do government agencies have to change or amend the privacy changes?

A: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gained greater oversight over Google's handling of personal information as part of a settlement reached last year. Google submitted to the agreement after exposing its users email contacts when it launched a now-defunct social networking service called Buzz in 2010. The consent order requires Google's handling of personal information to be audited every other year and forbids misleading or deceptive privacy changes.

Google met with the FTC before announcing the privacy changes. Neither the company nor the FTC has disclosed whether Google satisfied regulators that the revisions comply with the consent order.