university of california

An example of a webpage made completely unusable by injected ads

A Google-sponsored study carried out by the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara found “tens of millions of instances” of ad malware in the course of just a few months. In all, they found that a staggering 5.5% of unique IP addresses – representing millions of users – were affected.

Ad injection malware drops its own ads into whatever web page an infected machine displays. Revenue from these ads is filtered through ad networks, where genuine companies end up paying the bills, effectively stealing revenue that should have gone to the websites themselves.

Some of this malware goes further than simply injecting ads … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

The Google Glass Explorer program ended somewhat abruptly in January, and this didn’t come as much surprise to the Glass-bashing media nor those who tried the device for their own consumer use. In these situations, where Glass was a privacy nightmare and an underpowered gadget, the head-mounted wearable display would appear to be a failed piece of consumer technology (and Google’s Astro Teller believes that allowing this mindset to spread was one of the project’s biggest failures).

And it’s true. The first-generation of Google Glass might not really bring much value to the daily lives of most people, and it’s definitely not close to being socially acceptable quite yet. But many companies and organizations that adopted the experimental $1,500 spectacles for specific use cases weren’t so quick to dismiss the device. In fact, there are many groups—even now, after the Explorer program has ended—who are still doing some exciting things with it.

Expand
Expanding
Close