Published 18:54 IST, February 5th 2020
Google apologizes after tech giant's glitch sends user videos to strangers
Google on Tuesday, February 4, apologised for the technical glitch which resulted in the sending of users videos to strangers, international media reported
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Google on Tuesday apologised for a technical glitch which resulted in the sending of users videos to strangers, international media reported. The technology company clarified that a software glitch resulted in some photo app smartphone videos being sent to the wrong people.
Extremely apologetic
Google, replying to an inquiry, said that it was extremely apologetic for everything that had happened. It added that the company has fixed the underlying issue and has conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent it from happening again.
It was estimated that a small fraction of people who used the Takeout tool might have encountered the glitch which affected people using it between November 21 and 25 last year. According to reports, these users may have received either incomplete archives or videos and not photos that weren’t theirs.
Google’s Takeout tool was intended to simplify the download of user data from cloud-hosted services such as email or photo or video storage. However, in this case, the bug delivered videos to the wrong people.
Google Takeout is a project by the Google Data Liberation Front that allows users of Google products, such as YouTube and Gmail, to export their data to a downloadable archive file.
The user can select to export all of the available services or choose services from a given list, the tool then put all the data into a zip file. The zip file contains a separate folder for each service that was selected for export. For Google+ Pages data, it allows users to export data from pages that they have created, not pages that they manage.
In another damaging situation, the Justice Department official leading the investigation of Google's market dominance is stepping aside from the departmental probe because of his previous lobbying work for the company, international media reported on Tuesday.
Reportedly, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim is recusing himself from the investigation into Google, a person familiar with the matter said. Reports state the person wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Delrahim lobbied on Google’s behalf in 2007 when the Mountain View, California-based internet company faced antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of DoubleClick, a competitor in digital advertising.
18:54 IST, February 5th 2020