Google is trying to set us up! – BREAKING NEWS – The New Web Project revealed before it’s release!

Picture: part of the piece of paper we discovered.

WHAT WE DISCOVERED TODAY IS HUGE. Glad we made it back.. it was pretty exciting. We went to the Bilderberg Hotel in Amsterdam this morning as some Google employees should have a meeting today. We wanted to interview some of them and confront them with some critics heard over the internet about Google and the public’s privacy concerns. We decised to secretly film some of the members entering the building, which you’ll see later this week.. we try to get the video online as soon as possible.

Pictures: Google CEO Eric Schmidt arrives in his car in front of the Bilderberg Hotel Amsterdam.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt arrived first, obviously holding some very important papers, you can see them on the photos in this blog post. After that, several other members of the Google staff – we don’t know their names yet – arrived at Bilderberg’s.. WHAT THEN HAPPENED WAS REALLY REMARKABLE! One of them dropped his papers.. HE DROPPED IT, just in front of us, several meters from our standing point. They quickly got the papers together and went inside, but guess what……

THEY LEFT SOMETHING.. a piece of paper with some notes about what they are planning to discuss.. which made us VERY UPSET. The piece of paper made true what we already thought about the so-called ‘company who wants to make ALL information free available for everyone’. One of the Google credos is ‘Focus on the user and all else will follow’, well now they WILL do that, and are going too far also.

Pictures: Eric Schmidt walks anxiously to the entrance of Bilderberg.

Google plans a ‘New Web’

Google has plans to work together with Microsoft and the World Wide Web Consortium (which we discovered yesterday). But also Mozilla and AOL are involved. And.. because of the secrecy of all this (and the cars parked at Bilderberg’s) we believe the GOVERNMENT is involved too.

What are they trying to do? Well, the document tells us there must be some kind of a ‘New Internet’, where those 5 companies are working together to re-arrange the way the Internet works. We don’t know every detail yet, sorry. But this one is big, very big.

What we then discovered is a temporarily website about this project, it is called The New Web Project. What we can see now is just an announcement of ‘The New Web Project‘ that will be launced ‘soon’. When that actually happens.. we don’t know. But have you EVER seen the Google and Microsoft logos together on an official released website? We don’t. And we don’t think it’s a good idea to let two of the biggest computer networking companies working together, let alone 5 of them.. what will become of the smaller ones? Eaten by the big fish? Is this another prove of the monopolistic ideas Google has? And WHY are they meeting in Amsterdam? Is the Dutch government involved too? Or is it just a ‘random’ country like the meeting (probably about the same topic!) this week in Belgium?

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We have discovered a lot more, but don’t want to tell everything, YET. Just wait for our video to be put online this week, we’ll discover what Google is trying to do fully. For now we just want you to check www.thenewwebproject.com every day to see what is going on around here. Please also follow us at this blog and Twitter for the latest updates!

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Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission

In a privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document” – a vague statement that sounds like it could add up to quite a few people. The notice states that only text documents and presentations are affected, not spreadsheets, and provides links to each of the user’s documents that may have been shared in error.

I’ve contacted Google for confirmation and haven’t heard back, but this seems to be legit – our tipster says that he had previously shared the document listed in his notice, but now it has been reset to show 0 collaborators (one of the precautionary measures mentioned in the note).
Update: Google has confirmed that the note is real, and says that it was an isolated incident affecting less than .05% of all documents. The damage may not be widespread, but it’s still an unsettling lapse in security.

Here’s the letter in full:

Dear Google Docs user,

We wanted to let you know about a recent issue with your Google Docs account. We’ve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.

To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually. For your reference, we’ve listed below the documents identified as being affected.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. We want to assure you that we are treating this issue with the highest priority.

The Google Docs Team

In short, this is a massive blunder on Google’s part. I fully appreciate the lengths Google has gone to to offer a wide array of helpful online services, many of which are free of charge. But this error highlights why cloud-based services scare many people. Regardless of what a site’s posted rules and policies are, a technical glitch is all it takes to expose your sensitive data.

Update: An affected user posted his story and the exchange he had with Google support over the issue on Slashdot.

Update 2: A Google spokesperson has confirmed that the note is real:

We fixed the bug, which affected less than 0.05% of documents, and removed any collaborators. We also contacted the users who were affected to notify them of the bug and to identify which of their documents may have been affected. We have extensive safeguards in place to protect all documents, and are confident this was an isolated incident.