By Jennifer Saba

NEW YORK |
Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:28pm EDT

NEW YORK – Online search leader Google Inc. is taking yet another stab at social networking, as it tries to go up against Facebook in this wildly popular and lucrative segment of the Internet. This time the project is called Google+ and it aims to make online sharing more like real life.

"We think people communicate in very rich ways," said Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google. "The online tools we have to choose from give us very rigid services."

Other social networking tools make selective sharing within small groups difficult. They don't allow for the nuances that people are used to in offline communication and because they call so many acquaintances "friends," said Gundotra in a blog post announcing the service.

Many Facebook users, for instance, find it difficult to limit their status updates to small groups of people so that their coworkers aren't exposed to party photos or their parents aren't privy to flirtatious posts on their "wall." Though Facebook has tried to address this with a much-hyped "Groups" feature, it's not clear how many people use it.

Gundotra's criticism seems aimed squarely at Facebook, the world's largest online social network. Facebook has become synonymous with online sharing since its founding seven years ago.

In a prepared statement, Facebook said only that "we're in the early days of making the web more social, and there are opportunities for innovation everywhere."

Google, which dominates Internet search with a firm hold on two-thirds of the U.S. market, has been experimenting with different social tools since late 2009 with limited success. "Buzz" was one major mishap. The product was a social network attached to Google's popular Gmail service, and it wound up exposing email contacts that users did not want to share. Google eventually agreed to submit to independent audits of its privacy controls every other year for the next two decades as part of a Federal Trade Commission settlement.

Google shut down another attempt at online sharing, Google Wave, last August after unveiling it with much fanfare in 2009. The service, which let users chat, share files and collaborate on documents in real time, didn't gain enough fans.

More than a year in the works, the project Google unveiled Tuesday lets users share things with smaller groups of people through a feature called "Circles." This means only college buddies, say, or your favorite co-workers can see the photos, links our updates that you post.

Another feature called "Sparks" aims to make it easier to find online content you care about, be it news about surfing or barbecue recipes. You can then share this with friends who might be interested in it. In an online video, Google calls it "nerding out" and exploring a subject together.

There's also a group messaging service called "Huddle" and a feature that lets users instantly upload photos that they take with mobile phones. The photos are stored in a private photo album on Google's remote servers, and users can access them and share them as they see fit.

Altimeter Group analyst Charlene Li has high hopes for the friend grouping feature. She said that her biggest pet peeve with Facebook is its existing friend management tools. She noted that millions of people already use Google to share things with others via email, and Google+ looks like a natural extension of this type of sharing, making it more functional and organized.

"I think Facebook is going to have to up its game," she said.

Google+ is undergoing what the company calls a "field trial," so it's accessible by invitation only and not yet available to the public. The company declined to say when it'll be more widely available.

Lou Kerner, a social media analyst with Wedbush Securities, believes the game is over in the competition to become the world's global social network. With 700 million users, Facebook has won, he said.

There's a lot more to the social Web than just creating a successful social network, though, and Kerner thinks that with Google+ the search leader is trying to make its existing product offerings more social.

"I don't think they're seeing this as a direct competitor to Facebook," he said.

Google+ does have its skeptics.

"People have their social circles on Facebook," said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst with research firm eMarketer. "Asking them to create another social circle is challenging."

And Google is still best known for its flagship service, online search.

"The whole idea of a Google social network...they've been throwing stuff against the wall for several years and so forth nothing has stuck." Going to Google to be social, she added, is like "going to Starbucks for the muffins. Or, for that matter, going to Facebook for search."

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AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz in San Francisco contributed to this story.

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON |
Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:59pm EDT

LONDON – Nearly 180 passwords belonging to members of an Atlanta-based FBI partner organization have been stolen and leaked to the Internet, the group confirmed Sunday.

The logins belonged to members of the local chapter of InfraGard, a public-private partnership devoted to sharing information about threats to U.S. physical and Internet infrastructure, the chapter's president told The Associated Press.

"Someone did compromise the website," InfraGard Atlanta Members Alliance President Paul Farley said in a brief email exchange. "We do not at this time know how the attack occurred or the method used to reveal the passwords."

Copies of the passwords — which appear to include users from the U.S. Army, cybersecurity organizations and major communications companies — were posted to the Internet by online hacking collective Lulz Security, which has claimed credit for a string of attacks in the past week.

In a statement, Lulz Security also claimed to have used one of the passwords to steal nearly 1,000 work and personal emails from the chief executive of Wilmington, Delaware-based Unveillance LLC.

Lulz Security claimed it was acting in response to a recent report that the Pentagon was considering whether to classify some cyberattacks as acts of war.

The FBI said Sunday that it was aware of the incident and that steps were being taken to mitigate the damage. Farley said InfraGard's website had been taken down and that members had been advised to change their passwords and beware of further attacks.

Farley added that his group — a volunteer organization — had had no previous involvement with Lulz Security, which describes itself as a collective of hackers who attack weakly-protected websites for fun. Lulz is a reference to Internetspeak for "laugh out loud."

The collective appears to have had a busy week.

Earlier Sunday, Nintendo said it had been targeted in a recent online data attack claimed by Lulz Security. Nintendo said no personal or company information was lost.

On Thursday, Lulz Security boasted of a major breach which saw as many as tens of thousands of Sony users' details posted to the Internet.

The group has also claimed credit for defacing the PBS website after the public television broadcaster aired a documentary seen as critical of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Emails and other messages seeking comment from the group over the past few days have gone unanswered, although it maintains an active presence on microblogging site Twitter, where it taunts its opponents and promises more hacks.

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Online:

InfraGard: http://www.infragard.net/

Unveillance: http://www.unveillance.com/

BEIJING – China denied it supports hacking activities and said it is part of global efforts to combat computer security threats Thursday, a day after Google disclosed some of its email users suffered hacking attacks that orginated within the country.

Google disclosed Wednesday that personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, had been breached.

Google traced the origin of the attacks to Jinan, China, the home city of a military vocational school whose computers were linked to an assault 17 months ago on Google's systems.

China is firmly opposed to activities that sabotage Internet and computer security, including hacking, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters Thursday.

Hong said hacking was a global problem and Chinese networks had also been targeted by hackers, but he gave no specifics. He said China was working to crack down on the problem, but he didn't respond when asked whether it would investigate this specific incident.

"Allegations that the Chinese government supports hacking activities are completely unfounded and made with ulterior motives," Hong said.

Google said all of the hacking victims have been notified and their accounts have been secured.

This time around, the hackers appeared to rely on tactics commonly used to fool people into believing they are dealing with someone they know or a company that they trust. Once these "phishing" expeditions get the information needed to break into an email account, the access can be used to send messages that dupe other victims.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which has a hand in regulating the Internet, referred questions about the allegations to another regulatory agency, the State Council Information Office, which asked that questions be faxed and then did not respond.

The Pentagon said Thursday it had very little information since the reported breaches involved personal accounts rather than government email. And since the accounts were not official, the U.S. Department of Defense was unaware if the targeted individuals were defense employees, the statement said.

The latest attacks aren't believed to be tied to the more sophisticated assault last year. That intrusion targeted the Google's own security systems and triggered a high-profile battle with China's Communist government over online censorship.

The tensions escalated amid reports that the Chinese government had at least an indirect hand in the hacking attacks, a possibility that Google didn't rule out.

The previous break-in prompted Google to move its Chinese-language search engine off the mainland so it wouldn't have to censor content that the government didn't want the general public to see. The search engine is now based in Hong Kong, which isn't subject to Beijing's censorship rules.

China's official Xinhua News Agency blasted Google in an unsigned commentary on Thursday saying the company "provided no solid proof" to support its claims that the hack attacks originated in China.

Xinhua said Google's compaints had "become obstacles for enhancing global trust between stakeholders in cyberspace."