Google resolved their storage blunders recently and, in an unannounced act of reconciliation, I assume, extended my paid storage upgrade for a few extra weeks. But imagine my surprise when I got this email today:



At first glance, you might think to yourself - that's nice of Google, warning you that they are about to charge your card, a service which they do automatically to prevent you from having to take any action or lose your data. Except if you see this:



Apparently, they want me to pay $25 for 6GB of space, but everyone else gets the same thing for $20? My reward for being an early Google adopter is that I get to pay a steeper fee?

Is Google the next "Boston Market," expanding too fast to keep quality at the same level? Lately, it seems like Google's apps are quirkier, their service flakier, and their support non-existent. Is it a mistake to continue to entrust all of our data to Google?

Tags: Google, Bug, Gmail, Picasaweb, Rant
Comments

Yes, I can now confirm that I have found a bug in Picasa Web Albums. Since the new "tagging" features are not validated - either client side or server side - you can use URL signficant characters in your tags. At first, I used a plus sign (+), which was URL decoded as a space. This lead me to try #, then ?, and finally &, which inexplicably - WORKS!

So I created a new tag D&psc=CONTACTS -- and guess what? -- it has some funny results. It searches all of your contacts' photos for the letter D (which is common in default photo names, such as DSC001.jpg). Then I thought, "I wonder if I browse the JS source if I can find a command that is passed via URL GET variable that can be instantiated via an intentionally malcrafted tag?" I have posted on the Google USENET group and filed a bug through the standard complaint form. I consider this pretty big news, but I don't want to submit it to digg or Slashdot or post on OSNews until someone has a chance to implement a fix, which is probably pretty trivial (URL encode the tag links) or fix it properly (validate tags on creation).

Anyway, I'm psyched, because I understand it's pretty rare to find a bug in Google's code.

Tags: Google, Picasa, Picasaweb, Bug, Code
Comments