In a legal filing meant to defend its advertising empire, Google may have inadvertently said what many in the industry have long suspected: the open web is in serious decline. That’s the phrase the company used in its September 5 court response as it fights against a proposed breakup of its ad business. At stake is whether Google must divest its AdX advertising exchange—an engine that has helped it dominate online display advertising for years.
But in trying to save itself from being carved up by the Department of Justice, Google made an unexpected pivot. After years of insisting that traffic from search is strong and the web is flourishing, the company is now warning that forced divestment could speed up what it calls the “rapid decline” of the open web.
So which is it? A healthy ecosystem driving billions of dollars in value—or a fragile economy on the brink of collapse? [Read more…]
On Wednesday, researchers uncovered three improperly issued TLS certificates for Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS service, encrypted DNS lookup used by millions. The concern was clear: anyone with those credentials could impersonate Cloudflare’s resolver, decrypt user traffic, or redirect queries to malicious sites.
A sinister campaign known as ShadowCaptcha is using over 100 compromised WordPress sites as unwitting hosts, redirecting visitors to fake CAPTCHA pages. These deceptive pages trigger malware delivery ranging from credential stealers to ransomware and cryptocurrency miners.
Cyberattacks on U.S. federal courts are no longer just IT problems. They now pose a national security threat.
You work hard for good reviews. You earn them one customer at a time. They land on your Google Business profile for everyone to see. And then… you stick a link in your footer and call it a day.