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Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

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Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#71

Post by [deleted] »

pseudalopex wrote: post #60
rayiner wrote: post #41

Framing this as "who gets this pot of advertising money?" is the honest way to frame it. Privacy is just a proxy war between companies seeking advertising revenues. But who gets the advertising revenue isn't the relevant policy concern. The government shouldn't care whether Google gets that revenue or someone else. The relevant policy concerns are what level of privacy protections do people want, and what practical c…

ISPs, search engines, ad networks, and email services are different markets, even if some of the participants overlap. How does deregulating ISPs get us any closer to regulating search engines?

[deleted]

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#72

Post by nikcub »

saganwrap wrote: post #58
franciscop wrote: post #6

In my opinion this is the problem of monopoly. US ISP don't have to compete among themselves to offer a better service as I learned recently. You/they get one ISP per area with no option to use a different one. Then they become huge and start to compete for other things, which in this case is the content. This turns out is bad for: - the user for getting subpar Internet access with a fixed conditions and no option. -…

Usually there are two main options - an evil cable TV company and an equally evil telephone company. In distant third are evil cellular data providers, clueless WISPs, and struggling CLECs. Oligopoly may be a natural state for last-mile high-speed Internet service. I believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP access to city provided FTTH. In low population density areas it seems really…

> I believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP access to city provided FTTH

Australia has done this on a national scale. There is now a government owned network which the existing providers were forced to sell their networks into. The ISPs then compete for services over the top of this network.

The idea is that eventually the national network is also privatized but constrained into being a dumb pipe by regulation.

This model has some problems - for ex. it has prevented some genuine innovation in providing broadband, but there are many benefits to accepting that internet infrastructure is a natural monopoly.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#73

Post by rayiner »

nikcub wrote: post #70
rayiner wrote: post #41

Framing this as "who gets this pot of advertising money?" is the honest way to frame it. Privacy is just a proxy war between companies seeking advertising revenues. But who gets the advertising revenue isn't the relevant policy concern. The government shouldn't care whether Google gets that revenue or someone else. The relevant policy concerns are what level of privacy protections do people want, and what practical c…

I can and do opt out of Google - I disable third-party cookies and run an ad blocker. That first step alone is enough to make a lot of ad targeting irrelevant. What a lot of people might not realize is that with the shift to mobile browsing and Apple disabling third-party cookies by default a lot of the data on ad networks and brokers has gone completely dark. It's a real crisis in the industry, and ironically one of…

You can easily block ISP tracking with VPN. You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones. And Google and others can also track you without cookies using e.g. browser fingerprinting techniques. http://www.venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/the-cookie-is-dead-her....

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#74

Post by nostrademons »

rayiner wrote: post #66
nostrademons wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations can be easier for Google than any other company building now while still being more difficult than when the incumbent companies put their wires in . Google Fiber didn't expand to California because of CEQA; the practical effect of CEQA is that it lets any property owner along the dig sue to block the project entirely. Note that Google Fiber's beta test was at Stanford, which is in Silicon Valley but happe…

CEQA is quite a bit different than saying the "municipal governments are in Verizon's pocket." Also, CEQA was enacted in 1970. All modern broadband networks were built under the auspices of laws like that.

Yeah, perhaps I should retract the implication that the officials involved are corrupt. There doesn't have to be outright corruption for regulations to be an effective barrier to new entrants, and to prevent consumers from getting new services they want. All it requires is a cost of compliance that is greater than the delta in perceived consumer welfare, or even just a failure to pass the benefits to consumers of regulatory changes along to the regulators who are responsible for making them.

The broadband technology may have postdated CEQA, but Verizon already had the right-of-ways, utility poles, and trenches dug. My parents were one of the first customers for Verizon Fios when it launched. They ran our fiber line over the telephone pole that had been outside our house since it was built in 1960.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#75

Post by nikcub »

rayiner wrote: post #73
nikcub wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can and do opt out of Google - I disable third-party cookies and run an ad blocker. That first step alone is enough to make a lot of ad targeting irrelevant. What a lot of people might not realize is that with the shift to mobile browsing and Apple disabling third-party cookies by default a lot of the data on ad networks and brokers has gone completely dark. It's a real crisis in the industry, and ironically one of…

You can easily block ISP tracking with VPN. You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones. And Google and others can also track you without cookies using e.g. browser fingerprinting techniques. http://www.venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/the-cookie-is-dead-her... .

VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is.

But part of the solution if the regulations stay the way they are may well be that VPNs are made easier by being built into operating systems and provided by for ex. Apple as part of iCloud

> You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones.

I'm genuinely curious if you have a cite on Google using received emails in ad targeting. Likewise with receiving messages on Android devices - because neither are in their privacy policy[0].

Google do run services that aren't part of the ad targeting dragnet - partly because a lot of the data is useless if you're not a Google user and not terribly additionally useful if you are a Google customer

> using e.g. browser fingerprinting techniques.

The article you linked to talks about Google and Facebook using SSO. Actual browser fingerprinting to bypass user privacy settings is illegal. There are many cases of the FTC smacking companies down for that.[1][2][3][4]

[0] https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/googl...

[2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/191409/kissme...

[3] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291523/turn-s...

[4] https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/20/ftc-tells-verizon-superc...

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#76

Post by rayiner »

nostrademons wrote: post #74
rayiner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEQA is quite a bit different than saying the "municipal governments are in Verizon's pocket." Also, CEQA was enacted in 1970. All modern broadband networks were built under the auspices of laws like that.

Yeah, perhaps I should retract the implication that the officials involved are corrupt. There doesn't have to be outright corruption for regulations to be an effective barrier to new entrants, and to prevent consumers from getting new services they want. All it requires is a cost of compliance that is greater than the delta in perceived consumer welfare, or even just a failure to pass the benefits to consumers of reg…

Those poles, conduits, and other rights of way are regulated by the FCC (or a state agency under delegated powers). See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224. Nothing is preventing another company from running fiber along those telephone poles, other than the fact that there isn't any money in it.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#77

Post by rayiner »

nikcub wrote: post #75
rayiner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily block ISP tracking with VPN. You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones. And Google and others can also track you without cookies using e.g. browser fingerprinting techniques. http://www.venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/the-cookie-is-dead-her... .

VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. But part of the solution if the regulations stay the way they are may well be that VPNs are made easier by being built into operating systems and provided by for ex. Apple as part of iCloud > You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones.…

> I'm genuinely curious if you have a cite on Google using received emails in ad targeting.

The point is, just as with ISPs, whether you can "opt out" of Google depends entirely on what Google chooses to do or not do (in the future, if not now). Even if you don't use Google services, its almost impossible to not send information to those who do. When I first saw ads on Google fifteen years ago I never expected that it'd be tracking me across the Internet and reading all the mail I send my family, but here we are.

> Actual browser fingerprinting to bypass user privacy settings is illegal.

Source? All your links relate to misrepresentations in disclosure, not the underlying practice being illegal.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#78

Post by visarga »

This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into monopolies.

But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools. If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much faster.

VPNs could suffer from the same problem as ISPs - how can we be sure they are not selling customer data?

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#79

Post by flukus »

nikcub wrote: post #72
saganwrap wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually there are two main options - an evil cable TV company and an equally evil telephone company. In distant third are evil cellular data providers, clueless WISPs, and struggling CLECs. Oligopoly may be a natural state for last-mile high-speed Internet service. I believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP access to city provided FTTH. In low population density areas it seems really…

> I believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP access to city provided FTTH Australia has done this on a national scale. There is now a government owned network which the existing providers were forced to sell their networks into. The ISPs then compete for services over the top of this network. The idea is that eventually the national network is also privatized but constrained into bein…

> This model has some problems - for ex. it has prevented some genuine innovation in providing broadband

Until the conservatives got into power it was going to advance broadband considerably. Now it's just a multibillion dollar gift to their political mates.

20 years from now when we still have slow internet I'm still going to be telling everyone it's the Liberal parties fault.

Re: Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business

#80

Post by ocdtrekkie »

rayiner wrote: post #76
nostrademons wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, perhaps I should retract the implication that the officials involved are corrupt. There doesn't have to be outright corruption for regulations to be an effective barrier to new entrants, and to prevent consumers from getting new services they want. All it requires is a cost of compliance that is greater than the delta in perceived consumer welfare, or even just a failure to pass the benefits to consumers of reg…

Those poles, conduits, and other rights of way are regulated by the FCC (or a state agency under delegated powers). See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224 . Nothing is preventing another company from running fiber along those telephone poles, other than the fact that there isn't any money in it.

Indeed, Google did an incredible amount of marketing to suggest otherwise, but at the end of the day, I suspect Google discovered the costs of laying fiber to the home and providing gigabit service wasn't recoupable at $60 a month like they claimed it was.
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