.Sometimes, a launch or a change has bad timing and that is exactly what happened to Google last week. I wrote a post about how a Twitter employee had almost of his Google documents downloaded and now published online. That was a severe blow to cloud computing and thus to Google, one of the companies centered around cloud computing. Well, call it bad timing but last week was also the launch of a new feature on Google Health that allows visitors to upload their medical records. They also would like visitors to upload their death wishes. Of course, imagine anyone, no matter who being exposed and having not only their entire medical history but also their testament made public. Nightmare? Probably a lot worse.

No doubt, health records is probably the issue where populations are most scared of security issues. I personally don’t think it’s so surprising to see medical records usually be decades behind other sectors in terms of technology. There is just so much downside risk involved in any security breach that the risks involved for any health or government in getting everything in a digital form have so far ensured that these records remained on paper sheets. Will that change? Yes of course. There are few doubters that technology could help improve the quality, speed and accuracy of medical treatments. But between a private secured network and giving the data to Google, which remains one password away, there is a major line.

It’s difficult to blame Google as it clearly makes sense for them to move in this direction, they have the perfect infrastructure. But I do think that there needs to be a lot more emphasis on security if Google wishes to move in that direction. Many options are possible, most of them could prove expensive. For example, they could have some type of digital tracker that could get thumb prints. There are probably dozens of different ways to make this happen but in my opinion the current security is far from sufficient. Am I the only here who thinks that? Honestly, I’ve generally been on the other side of the debate but recent events as well as the higher value of data that can now be uploaded on the internet has convinced me that more needs to be done to protect identities.

Since there is no “Internet Police”, governments are probably the most likely to be able to force change. Just last week, the Canadian government made its view public: “It’s clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates,”. Will we see governments get more involed in such matters in the future??

It’s been a bit of a battle of catch back up to everything after what is by very far the best weekend of my life, but I’m finally getting there and had an opportunity to scout over the web looking for the more interesting articles in my opinion. Here is a sample of what I found:)

-TFB had been considering quitting his job for a while and it looks like he has come to a decision, take a look at his reasons.

-I always find those who make picks in the airline industry very brave. No surprise to see Zach (one of my favourite bloggers) take a shot!

-BMSP explores the best stock to buy during a recession, is it too late to use those tips? Hopefully not…

-A good article by Canadian Capitalist about which types of investments should go into which account!

-Always unfortunate to hear about job losses, especially when it’s from a blogger you read and like.. Best of luck in your job search!

-An in-depth look into the many things I and many others should know about refinancing!!

-One of my favourite reads of this week, all about beggars, how well do they do, is it a career??

-A new type of ETF makes its debut, 130/30.. it will be interesting to see how this ones goes!

-3 types of errors traders make!!

-Do you have any financial regrets? Of course you do. Well, turns out, so does MDJ!

-And finally, this article on Fool about Warren Bufft and sex )

Cloud computing has been one of the buzz words in recent months as various companies have been putting workforce to compete. We had ourselves wrote about cloud computing as `the next big thing”. Of course, one of the major players in this arena is Google. The threat is serious enough for Microsoft to even be working on a free version of its Microsoft Office to be offered online. That is enough to convince me how seriously companies are taking this.

However, one of the more important critics made towards cloud computing is around the security involved. In a typical company, it is rather difficult for outsiders to get access to important or critical documents as they would usually need either very impressive skills to connect from a distance but usually will need to physically connect from a company pc and get the documents. It happens, but it is rare. And this week, one company got caught in a MAJOR way. It is a company that has been mentionned quite a few times; Twitter. One of the most interesting stories right now in technology. Of course, surrounding the company are many questions about how many users it truly has, how it intends to become profitable, etc.

Many of those questions have now been answered as a hacker has sent “TechCrunch” over 300 files that he gained from hacking into one of the executives emails. Among the findings are:

• the complete list of employees
• their food preferences
• their credit card numbers
• some confidential contracts with Nokia, Samsung, Dell, AOL, Microsoft and others
• direct emails with web and showbizz personalities
• phone numbers
• meeting reports (very informatives)
• internal document templates
• time sheet
• applicant resumes
• salary grid (time for me to move..lol)

How incredible humiliating. TechCrunch and others have since been publishing financial forecasts, infos about future plans for a tv show and a lot more is to come. No doubt, this will have many impacts on the company, all because these documents had been posted with Google’s apps. Now Google is not at fault here from what we know but there is no doubt that it will have a more difficult time selling its “cloud computing” solution. Twitter is a private company and most of these infos should never have made it in the public. Imagine those Google or Microsoft employees who have applied (without success) to work at Twitter.. they might have some interesting meetings with their bosses in the next few days.

Of course, I still believe that Cloud computing will recover and still be the next big thing. But clearly, the solutions offered currently lack security features that are necessary. By the way, Twitter did post an official response, that can be seen here. I don’t know about you, but personally I would not want my company’s documents to be one password away from being published all over the internet.

How do you feel about cloud computing after such an event??

Over the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talks about Algorithmic trading. It is basically trading that is done electronically through programmed rules. These high powered machines will trade over and over the same stocks when specific technical events happen to profit from very small mispricings between securities, to profit from momentum and even in some cases (although few would admit to this), to manipulate markets. The recent arrest of an ex-Goldman employee as long as many reports about how Goldman has mastered this form of trading had placed very high expectations on today’s earning report. And even with such high expectations, Goldman Sachs (GS) crushes estimates coming in with earnings of 3.44$B for the last quarter.

If electronic trading does account for such a high proportion of Goldman’s trading, it is certainly worth looking into as many in and outside of the markets consider this to be a potential danger. To be sure, electronic trading is now the norm and in fact now represents over 70% of trading done on us exchanges by many estimates. Many of the recent critics have said that in such a high tech game, it is now impossible for small or retail investors to compete. And yes, I agree that any small investor trying to arbitrage two markets has pretty much no chance to make it happen on his own. He would need high tech equipment, programmers and good real estate (yes, location does matter when you are talking about hundreds of a second).

But let’s be real. How many small investors are actually investing for a few seconds at a time? Very few in fact. Most investors will buy and hold, at least for a few hours or longer. And in that case, liquidity is important and I don’t think anyone would argue that these electronic traders bring lots of liquidity in the market. Having a bid-ask spread that is less than a cent will be to the advantage of most investors and that will traditionally happen a lot more on stocks that trade electronically. So yes, I do believe that these traders actually do help small investors do well, and certainly would not be the one criticising…at least not because of liquidity!

Personally, I consider the more valid criticism to be about what happens in a crash, as all these electronic programs could decide to sell at once and it would send the market down very very quickly. It might be something to be looked into but considering how the markets were “fairly” calm during the past few months, which were a very good test I would say…do you agree?

Have you ever heard of Rosetta Stone(RST), one of the more recent IPO’s on the NYSE, a company that sells software that guides users through the difficult task of learning languages.  They are now suing Google in a case that could set an important precedent. It’s quite simple really. If you go to Google and search for “Rosetta Stone”, depending on your country, you will probably see ads by a few different companies. And that, according to Rosetta Stone is illegal because Google is making money off of Rosetta Stone’s trademark. Of course, this will be one those fights that Google will fight until the end because it is easy to imagine how many companies could go on and sue Google. There are so many trademarks that Google sells advertising on that it could also mean very important losses if ever Google had to stop.

“We allow trademarks to be used as keyword triggers in Adwords because users searching on Google benefit from being able to choose from a variety of competing advertisers” said a spokesman of Google. Of course, that defence seems very poor to me as there is no way a company can defend its actions simply by saying it is doing what is best for its users. Can you imagine all those torrent sites and others such as The Pirate Bay trying to defend themselves legally by saying that they are doing it for their users? Seems highly unlikely. Of course, Google will have a lot of other of arguments but I do think that this case should be followed very closely by all Google analysts. Today, the stock barely moved and actually rose 4,01$ to 414.40$ as few analysts give Rosetta Stone much of aa chance to succeed in this case. The story everyone is talking about is really about Google’s upcomming play on operating systems.

So is it the law case that will define Google? Of course not. But I think it is one we should follow closely as it might have an important impact on the search operations of Google, which to date, remain the only very profitable area in the internet giant.

What do you think? Think thaat Google should feel threatened by this legal action?

Only a couple of weeks ago, we published a series about Microsoft’s fate and one of the posts was about its very public battle with Google. The battle took a turn many expected to happen a lot further in time this week as Google confirmed its intentions of building an operating system that will compete with Microsoft Windows, which is in many ways Microsoft’s blood. Take out Windows and it is debatable how Microsoft could actually survive. In fact, Google would like to redefine what an operating system is and make it a lot faster (seconds to load) and mostly browser based. It’s obviously very unclear at this point how it could all work but it certainly seems like something to worry about if you are Microsoft right? Surprisingly to many, the stock market certainly did not think so as Microsoft did not suffer. Was it because it was nothing new and had been expected by the market? Doubtful. My impression is that the market simply does not think that Google will be able to put up much of an attack on Microsoft’s might operating system. That in itself is very surprising given the love story between Google and the stock market.

It will probably take 5-10 years to actually see results on this but it’s true that recent attacks by Google for example on the Office suite (with Google docs) have yet to show much progress and in fact have barely even had an impact on Microsoft’s business. There is no doubt that entering the highly complex world of operating systems will prove much more of a challenge. Google has also ventured into the browser game and while Chrome has some market share, its growth has been a disapointment to many. So this all comes down to analysts predicting that Google will remain a superior company, superior in search that is. For now, Google has very few believers in the fact it could pull off such a major offensive.

But then again, don’t you think that is exactly what Google wants to be? The underdog who nobody gives a shot to? Not too long ago, Google was a tiny company battling it out to try to make a name for itself.  Even its progress in the browser war seen by many as a failure is not seen as such by insiders of the company simply because they know how much time it takes for individuals and companies to switch gears.. and the operating system will be as long of a war as either company has ever seen…