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Google Fonts Analytics

fonts.google.com

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Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#161

Post by saagarjha »

WorldMaker wrote: post #107
ThePhysicist wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google might have better ways to track people. Fonts are also cached by CDNs and the local browser so I’m not sure if they provide good tracking data (they get loaded only for the first page visit for example and popular fonts like Open Sans are probably already in your cache when you open a page). If you’re concerned about tracking as a website operator you can simply load the fonts from your own server, mos…

You can even install the fonts locally to your machine and your browser will favor the local copy. There are some tools like Skyfonts that let you install the top X from Google Fonts and it can be a fun way to speed up a lot of the web; with the tradeoff that not a lot of people have the top X installed for useful large versions of X and that becomes its own fingerprint for surveillance software (testing how long tex…

> You can even install the fonts locally to your machine and your browser will favor the local copy.

Note that some browsers are going in the opposite direction and actively hiding installed fonts from websites due to the potential for fingerprinting.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#162

Post by raphlinus »

nixpulvis wrote: post #155
raphlinus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly local font manipulation tools, including a GUI editor, but I can imagine some of the work ultimately becoming useful inside web services.

Not font manipulation, but the Alacritty project has had an RFC [1] open for a while now to try and make font configuration better. It turns out I barely understand fontconfig every time I need to touch it. I'm just curious what (if any) your opinions about the de-facto Linux fontconfig framework are? [1]: https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues/957

I haven't dug too deep into it, but from what I've seen it seems complex, messy, and not up to solving real problems such as CJK Han unification. I wrote a bit about these difficulties in https://github.com/linebender/skribo/blob/master/docs/script... , and what I think was most disappointing is that I didn't get any actual feedback at the time. So it feels like about the same level of dysfunction as most Linux UI work.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#163

Post by raphlinus »

nl wrote: post #160
raphlinus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak to this a little, in terms of pitches we made to management to get resources for our little project. None of this is authoritative. 1. A lot of text was rendered into PNGs, and that made the web less searchable, as well as less accessible, slower to load, and less mobile-friendly. All 4 of these factors do have economic impact at Google scale. 2. Fonts were one of the few features that Flash had that HTML…

Are you the Raph who built Advogato? I loved that site.

Thanks! Yes, I've had quite a varied career so far :)

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#164

Post by jcheng »

crazygringo wrote: post #141
perardi wrote: post #34

In anticipation of "ugh, designers are ruining the web custom fonts", I'm glad that variable fonts are starting to percolate out. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ux... Less overall file size, less HTTP requests. Combine that with preloading and font-display, we're getting to the point where webfonts aren't a giant bandwidth suck. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/o..…

Oh wow, what's old is new again. I remember when Adobe launched Multiple Master fonts [1] in 1992 (same concept)... and then killed them in 1999 because not enough people were using them. I'll be fascinated to see if there's actually demand for it this time around. I personally have had tons of times I've wanted a semibold where none existed, or something halfway between regular and condensed. But I'm not convinced t…

As I understand it, Type 1 multiple master was simply superseded by OpenType variable fonts back in the 90s, which is all that Google link is describing. As a user it was a relief to have, afaict, all of the features of Type 1 with all of the convenience of TrueType.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#165

Post by jcheng »

jcheng wrote: post #164
crazygringo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, what's old is new again. I remember when Adobe launched Multiple Master fonts [1] in 1992 (same concept)... and then killed them in 1999 because not enough people were using them. I'll be fascinated to see if there's actually demand for it this time around. I personally have had tons of times I've wanted a semibold where none existed, or something halfway between regular and condensed. But I'm not convinced t…

As I understand it, Type 1 multiple master was simply superseded by OpenType variable fonts back in the 90s, which is all that Google link is describing. As a user it was a relief to have, afaict, all of the features of Type 1 with all of the convenience of TrueType.

Huh, I’m wrong. Apparently variable fonts were added to OpenType only recently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_fonts

(I think the features I was thinking of were ligatures and lowercase numbers)

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#166

Post by tjoff »

codyb wrote: post #131
tjoff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not say the opposite. Apparently they need to collect and store end-user data for serving fonts efficiently. Wonder what that could be... And if that information happens to be enough for further tracking then it seems to be fair game!

Couldn’t it just be for edge server location determination? Not a Google fan, but at their volume of traffic seems like it could be something they’ve optimized for.

Could be!

But they could have said so. And they could also have said that the information is not correlated with anything else.

All we know is that they have, very carefully, written something vague that they could do pretty much anything they wanted with.

And we are left with the question, why would they do that?

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#168

Post by orf »

kevindong wrote: post #139
paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source for that, or did you just make it up? Doing some very quick estimation I can't see it being more than $40-60 million, and that is using retail pricing.

I'm getting ~$130 million with these assumptions: * each font load is 170 KB (I downloaded Roboto and that's the file size of one weight) * 36.3 trillion font loads (per the source) * 36.3 trillion * 170 KB/font load = ~6171 PB [0] Plug 6171 PB into the GCP calculator [0] with all egress via GCP Cloud CDN to N. America and the bill comes out to just shy of $130 million. OP is off by an order of magnitude by my napkin…

You’re not factoring in worldwide distribution - not everyone lives in the USA, and costs worldwide bandwidth costs vary a lot.

Also we don’t know the number of http cache check requests. I’m assuming they number is way, way higher than the number of fonts served? That can cost you 160 million alone, with no bandwidth.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#169

Post by nitrogen »

laughinghan wrote: post #126
McDyver wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a lot of fluff and no actual reply. Users can be tracked without cookies being sent, while "access to the data is kept secure". Call me a cynic, but I lost my trust in google a long time ago.

"Users can be tracked without cookies being sent" How? Stylesheets can't use fingerprinting or Flash cookies or anything like that, only scripts can.

Stylesheets can fingerprint with the help of a server to track what resources get loaded or skipped, and a few clever media size queries etc.

Re: Google Fonts Analytics

#170

Post by matthberg »

crazygringo wrote: post #141
perardi wrote: post #34

In anticipation of "ugh, designers are ruining the web custom fonts", I'm glad that variable fonts are starting to percolate out. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ux... Less overall file size, less HTTP requests. Combine that with preloading and font-display, we're getting to the point where webfonts aren't a giant bandwidth suck. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/o..…

Oh wow, what's old is new again. I remember when Adobe launched Multiple Master fonts [1] in 1992 (same concept)... and then killed them in 1999 because not enough people were using them. I'll be fascinated to see if there's actually demand for it this time around. I personally have had tons of times I've wanted a semibold where none existed, or something halfway between regular and condensed. But I'm not convinced t…

I do a fair bit of design in my free time, and am friends with people majoring in it. People are excited about variable fonts in academia and in design circles. I use them nearly exclusively now between Inter, Merriweather, Bodoni* by Indestructible Type, Hepta Slab, and the IBM Plexes. And this is all just for people using it in desktop design programs, since it's being embedded there at the source (designers make it before it gets to the frontend folks), it's looking promising.

I'm 99% sure it'll catch on this time around, in short :)

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