It sounds like the ridiculous X11 quote is from idiotic parsing of User-Agents, possibly by the firm in question. Which is hilarious since despite acknowledging that proxies can strip User-Agent they go on to say this must mean Google is developing an operating system, and that it takes great pains to strip UA. Uh. If you're reinitiating connections to the outside world with your caching proxy, it's basically the default, and there's no reason Google wouldn't run a proxy that way. Moreover, given Google's interest in stamping out phishing and the like, running as much as possible through an aggressive proxy seems only reasonable. There are conclusions one can draw, but they somehow managed to draw all of the wrong ones.

A friend was noting that if Google really wanted to hide, the best way to hide isn't to have a "Look at me, I'm mysteriously blank!" user-agent, but to just fake the user-agent to look like some other browser/OS.

I sometimes wonder if these reporters know their articles are crap but they just figure their editors won't notice and they just have to get something out for the day.

Part of it is that many are steeped in technology only in the form of presentations, talks and memos from really dodgy sources, like the various industry speculation groups and traffic analyzers and whatever. I'd like to think that given better information they do better, and from what I hear from people I know who make an effort to talk to technology reporters, that is the case. I mean, the stupid people do better at making their information available in an accessible form than the smart people do. So the stupid people take the easy money and do the legwork for the non-embedded media. It sucks, but I guess the only way to fix it is to aggressively make oneself a source for the media.

Also, the speculation that it was a new operating system that had not filled in the optional OS section of the UA was hilarious. Yes, that's the most likely explanation. Yeesh.

Not to detract from the colossal crappiness of the Forbes article, but if you read the original article, it says that the user agent string is intact *except* for the OS:

A proxy server shouldn't cause such a block because it would block everything, which Net Applications sees all the time. With the one-third obfuscated Google visitors, it was only the OS that was removed. Their browser, for example, was not hidden. And two-thirds of Google systems surfing the Web identified their OS, mostly Linux.

This is unusual in my experience, but then I'm not a sysadmin.

Send to Forbes:
I upgraded my garage door controller from X10 to X11 and ever since then it has been a slow, buggy piece of garbage! At least the pop up ads are gone, but now there's a pair of creepy eyeballs that follow me around.

:-)

they reference my Android garage door opener app but confuse it and say that Android was ported to run on a garage door opener. I mean, almost the same, right?
^Haha. I can't wait for them XDA developers to port a proper rip of Android to windows mobile, it'll be best WinMo update ever.

The Forbes article is stupid. This article is maliciously stupid: http://precursorblog.com/content/google-uses-21-times-more-bandwidth-it-pays-first-ever-research-study

The guy's a shill for Telcos - http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/response-to-phone-companies-google.html

Yup. I found many articles calling out Scott Cleland, but that response from Google is the best of all of them.

and some older operating systems, like X11, he says.

LOL WOW.

I can't figure out what's with all the google-hate lately.

Google is quite big these days. Big means target. Inevitably.

big deal, i've been runing vista on my garage door opener for years