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Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

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101–110 of 354 posts

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#101

Google's way of leveraging their browser dominance to use 3rd party cookies as a way to gain competitive advantage: Step 1: Implement a whole new browser functionality where Google alone can track people. Step 2: Eliminate 3rd party cookies so Google's competitors have to create increasingly unethical and invasive fingerprinting techniques to remain competitive. Step 3: Increase advertising rates since they are the o…

Doesn't the rollout of IPv6 largely replace the cookie as a useful identifier of sorts?

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#102

Google's way of leveraging their browser dominance to use 3rd party cookies as a way to gain competitive advantage: Step 1: Implement a whole new browser functionality where Google alone can track people. Step 2: Eliminate 3rd party cookies so Google's competitors have to create increasingly unethical and invasive fingerprinting techniques to remain competitive. Step 3: Increase advertising rates since they are the o…

Doesn't the rollout of IPv6 largely replace the cookie as a useful identifier of sorts?

Not really. ipv6 has nothing to do with any of this.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of a snarky libertarian quip: > If a big company charges more than the competition, they say they're illegally abusing their monopoly. > If a big company charges the same as the competition, they say it's illegal collusion. > If a big company charges less than the competition, they say it's illegal price-dumping.

This seems like it overlooks the obvious possibility of things that don't fall into any of those three categories...

So being a small company?

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#104
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Google is probably paying Mozilla so that they block those cookies too... I think that they might have paid them for other things too... like for blocking 99% of extensions on Firefox mobile (those are speculations, that are very probable).

I still use Firefox 68 on Android since that's the last version to support extensions. It works well, for now.

I have extensions on Firefox nightly for android.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the rollout of IPv6 largely replace the cookie as a useful identifier of sorts?

Not really. ipv6 has nothing to do with any of this.

Yes it does. Users now have a unique IP address that is now static. Yes you can rotate your exact IP inside your block but you still keep the same subnet.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#107
post #67

Google's way of leveraging their browser dominance to use 3rd party cookies as a way to gain competitive advantage: Step 1: Implement a whole new browser functionality where Google alone can track people. Step 2: Eliminate 3rd party cookies so Google's competitors have to create increasingly unethical and invasive fingerprinting techniques to remain competitive. Step 3: Increase advertising rates since they are the o…

This is a good time to remind everyone that Google has planted a hard-coded "X-Client-Data" telemetry backdoor that is sent to DoubleClick domains, is never disclosed to users and is impossible to disable. The header, which is not available to any of their competitors, contains unique information about the install that could allow them to track people better than anyone.

Thanks, removed Chrome ages ago in favor of Microsoft's Edge (the new one). Microsoft is fast becoming the good guys. It sets a default tracking level of Balanced, which blocks trackers from unvisited sites - you may then make it more strict if desired, out of the box with no extra plugins required.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/learn-abo...

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#108
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely fingerprinting is PII? It allows for mosaic identification.

I don't know, are fonts installed on your system PII? Because it can be used for fingerprinting. But I don't know the precise definition, so maybe you're right.

Perhaps a reasonable line to draw would be that if the content of the information is enough to fingerprint, the it is PII (regardless if broken into many messages) and the individual data doesn't matter.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#109
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> increasingly unethical and invasive fingerprinting techniques to remain competitive. ... or serve cookies via first-party subdomain ... Also, hasn't Safari already killed third party cookies?

How do advertisers reconcile cloaked first party subdomains? It requires fingerprinting, or the first party to tell the real 3rd party (cloaked as a first party) things like email or real name, that can be cross referenced, no?

Yes, that is generally how they resolve it. Apple has started to reduce the effectiveness of CNAME cloaking.

The goal is that advertisers will eventually be far better off working with a system like Private Click Measurement (in Safari betas now and set to be in next releases) than insecure things like CNAME cloaking.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#110

Google's way of leveraging their browser dominance to use 3rd party cookies as a way to gain competitive advantage: Step 1: Implement a whole new browser functionality where Google alone can track people. Step 2: Eliminate 3rd party cookies so Google's competitors have to create increasingly unethical and invasive fingerprinting techniques to remain competitive. Step 3: Increase advertising rates since they are the o…

Doesn't the rollout of IPv6 largely replace the cookie as a useful identifier of sorts?

That's a good point. Static IPv6 addresses or even a (small) pool of them could make for a reliable ID.

Wonder how people should work around that?

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