By Gerry Shih
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Google Inc will
begin to shield news organizations and human rights groups from
cyberattacks as part of a new package of services designed to
support “free expression” on the Web, the internet giant said
Monday.
At a presentation in New York, the company also unveiled a
new technology called uProxy that allows citizens under some
regimes to bypass government censorship or surveillance software
to surf the Web. The software will be available for Google’s
Chrome browser and Firefox but not for rival Microsoft Corp’s
Internet Explorer, at least initially.
The world’s No. 1 search engine presented the two services –
as well as a new map that highlights cyberattacks taking place
around the world in real time – as some of the most significant
software products to emerge from Google Ideas, a think-tank
established by the company in 2010.
Known for its “Don’t Be Evil” corporate motto, Google has a
well-established reputation for resisting authorities around the
world who seek to censor its Web properties, including YouTube
and Blogger.
But the formation of the Ideas group, which the company
advertises as a “think/do tank” headed by Jared Cohen, a former
U.S. State Department official, has raised the possibility of
the company playing a more active role in furthering U.S.
policy.
Under its “Project Shield” initiative, Google said it would
host sites that frequently came under politically-motivated
distributed denial-of-service attacks. Because of the size and
sophistication of its technical infrastructure, Google is far
more able to withstand such attacks compared to websites hosted
independently.
The product remains in testing, Google said. A promotional
video made by Google featured an endorsement from Balatarin, a
popular Persian-language news website that has already tested
the digital shield program. Google has also worked to protect an
election monitoring website in Kenya, according to Forbes.
The uProxy software, funded by Google but developed by the
University of Washington and nonprofit group Brave New Software,
will allow users in countries like China to access the Internet
as it is seen by a friend in a different, uncensored country.
The software creates an encrypted connection between two
users in a way that resembles a virtual private network – a
method that savvy Chinese netizens currently use to circumvent
the government’s Great Firewall, which blocks many social media
sites.
Google said uProxy also remained in testing.
(Editing by Stephen Coates)
