Google Chrome, Google's Web Browser. Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons.

As news of another security crisis hit Google last week with the Android operating system app security breach, are we allowed to ask whether Google has lost their touch as one of the most secure companies today?

This question can be applied to not only Google, but other tech companies as well. Ellis Horowitz, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at USC, said it's a general phenomenon. 

"Because of Google's pervasiveness, their practices are more closely examined, meaning a security breach is large news because of the large reach that the breach has on the population," Horowitz said. "Certainly, this is a general phenomenon shared by more than just Google." 

Professor Johnathan Taplin of USC's Annenberg School of Communication said Google is held to the same standard as any other tech company.

"Microsoft has been criticized for loose privacy standards, and so has Facebook," Taplin said.

Looking at the three biggest security threats each company has experienced in the past few years can show which companies have had the largest security issues over time.

Google:

1. Android Market's malware-ridden apps: The marketplace contained apps that allowed sending private data to a specific people, certainly malicious software. These apps have since been removed.
2. Gmail outage: Recently, 150,000 users lost all information in their Gmail accounts, including emails, contacts, notes, and more. Google has restored data back to these accounts. 
3. Google Docs security flaws: In 2009, many documents had some security flaws which allowed private documents to be viewed by public eyes. This was fixed relatively quickly, but there's been questions about this. 

Microsoft:

1. Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer is notorious for having many bugs and consistently being the first hacked browser in hackathons, such as Pwn2Own.
2. Windows: Similarly to Internet Explorer, the Microsoft operating system is consistently found to have security deficiencies, though fixed with frequent updates.  
3. Security Essentials: Microsoft recently faced problems with their Security Essentials software, which had a bug that allowed hackers to gain more privilege on a computer, which could destroy the computer if necessary.

Facebook:

1. Data mining: Facebook has consistently been accused of data mining throughout their system, particularly with Facebook Beacon, which effectively pulled private information from Facebook accounts and sold it to advertisers.
2. Public code: Facebook had a slight error in August 2007, accidentally showing the PHP code used to run Facebook to the public while loading the site. This questioned 
3. Mark Zuckerberg and Privacy: Mark Zuckerberg has been known to say that he does not care about the privacy of people, which is certainly a scary thought.

There is definitely a different standard held for these tech companies. Even though Google did win the Pwn2Own hacking challenge with their web browser, Google Chrome, that small security victory went unnoticed compared to the holes left in the previous security bugs. 

Reach Ankit Tyagi here.

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