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

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

#181

Post by perryizgr8 »

Google has dug themselves into a deep hole when it comes to anything remotely related to web advertising. They own the top 2 browsers (Chrome and Firefox), they own the largest web ad business, and a lot of web tracking technology is used for delivering ads.

Any changes they try to push for in web standards will incite an angry response even if there is the appearance/possibility of any advantage to google ads.

I think the correct way to deal with this is to do what people are expected to do in any conflict of interest case: recuse themselves from any and all web standard committees and orgs. If they aren't willing to do that, unfortunately they should prepare for an expansive anti-trust action.

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

#182

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

rochak wrote: post #132
garbagetime wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is fast becoming the good guys I think it's probably about time we stop pretending any of these major tech corporations are good guys.

Exactly. At the end of the day, it is all about the money. If something isn’t making money, it is bound to be canned/changed sooner than later.

I wonder if there is room here for an existing company that already makes money via a subscription, to pivot into search.

I could see Apple or Netflix or Amazon, try and expand their offering to include search. They already have income streams that rely on the consumer, so they can build products that are in our best interest.

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

#183

Post by ttt0 »

tylerhou wrote: post #169
ttt0 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I don't, but some people are more or less forced to use either Google or Microsoft products by their employers. I really wish the solution was as simple as that.

The solution is as simple as: Go into your privacy settings, and turn off ad personalization. Takes like three clicks. https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en I have it off for both my personal and Google corporate accounts. (Disclaimer: I work at Google.) If you don't want to be signed in at all, you can install a Chrome extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-goo...

That's really cool, but didn't you guys got sued for tracking people even after they opted out?

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-sued-for-allegedly-tracking...

If I remember correctly you were also tracking logged out users. Are you still doing that or how do I opt out if I don't have an account? Do I have to install Chrome?

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

#184

Post by ellyagg »

madrox wrote: post #142

I hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies, or is trusting this article to form an opinion about it. Web advertising was a $319 billion dollar industry in 2019. Does anyone wonder who may be lobbying their government to scrutinize Google and offer themselves for interviews for articles like this? Does anyone think the result of beating up Project Sandbox will be more radical privacy pro…

IMO, Gogole having a monopoly on tracking me is clearly worse then the ability to track me being shared – and I can significantly hinder 3rd party tracking!

I'm far more afraid of Google strengthening its monopoly, on general principle.

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

#185

Post by ROARosen »

madrox wrote: post #142

I hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies, or is trusting this article to form an opinion about it. Web advertising was a $319 billion dollar industry in 2019. Does anyone wonder who may be lobbying their government to scrutinize Google and offer themselves for interviews for articles like this? Does anyone think the result of beating up Project Sandbox will be more radical privacy pro…

> I hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies

It doesn't need to be worse for it to be unacceptable to privacy-concerned folks which don't trust Google. It is just about the same to them since an untrustable entity like Google is stewarding it.

Which BTW makes it worse since the solution is basically putting trust in Google which just brings on more and undefined privacy issues.

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

#186

Post by sdenton4 »

neolog wrote: post #55
seaman1921 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly several of these guys just want to promote 'break google up' every chance they get just because it makes them feel good - without understanding how bad the consequences would be.

What would the bad consequences be?

One example: The road from security to revenue is a bit windy. So suppose chrome gets a revenue crunch after getting spun off, and lays off a bunch of the security group. Well, it turns out that security group is actually handling security for ALL of the browsers, because security is expensive, and none of the browsers are really making money, and chrome is open source. So now you've got reduced security in all of the browsers. Whoops?

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

#187

Post by jay_kyburz »

devlopr wrote: post #165
jay_kyburz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I didn't realize a subdomain was not considered 3rd party. So soon we'll see adnetwork.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com. I think we should just make cookies only work when the domain matches exactly.

You would see mydomain.com/adnetwork then.

Can browsers look up a different server addresses to send requests to that way? I didn't think that's how DNS worked but I'm no expert.

Advertisers can't trust content people to forward requests because it would be too easy to fake them.

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

#188

Post by tylerhou »

ttt0 wrote: post #183
tylerhou wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is as simple as: Go into your privacy settings, and turn off ad personalization. Takes like three clicks. https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en I have it off for both my personal and Google corporate accounts. (Disclaimer: I work at Google.) If you don't want to be signed in at all, you can install a Chrome extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-goo...

That's really cool, but didn't you guys got sued for tracking people even after they opted out? https://www.cnet.com/news/google-sued-for-allegedly-tracking... If I remember correctly you were also tracking logged out users. Are you still doing that or how do I opt out if I don't have an account? Do I have to install Chrome?

Everything below is my opinion, or information to the best of my personal knowledge. I don't speak for Google.

That lawsuit alleges that Google was tracking people (with analytics) during incognito mode, which is different from opting out of ad personalization. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552967 for HN discussion on the topic.

If you use Firefox, you can install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/interest-adve... to also opt out of ad-personalization.

Turning off ad personalization doesn't turn off tracking; it just prevents that data from being used in ads. If you want to turn off data collection altogether (for your Google account) you can manage activity altogether https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols. (I don't know whether this affects analytics; I assume it does, though.)

If you want to disable analytics tracking when you're logged out, you can install another extension (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout) or just install a content blocker like uBlock Origin that blocks the analytics.js/gtag.js scripts altogether.

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

#189

Post by Cederfjard »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #175
madrox wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it isn't good. This is HN, and we want the web advertising industry to go away. However, that's not going to be the outcome. Antitrust scrutiny in this case means making it more fair to third party advertisers...the people who will be hit most by third party cookie disabling. As much as we want to hate on Google, articles like this won't make them move toward more privacy.

I don’t want the web advertising industry to go away. It’s benign. If you don’t want advertisers to track you you have the option to default browse without cookies. Even better, default browse without cookies and JavaScript. Yes, I do this. If you understand how cookies work then this is a perfectly viable option for you. If you don’t, you likely don’t care about advertisers tracking you.

I disagree with your last statement. People may care about being tracked even though they don’t understand the mechanism, or even that it’s happening.

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

#190

Post by dmix »

madrox wrote: post #160
ogre_codes wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies Sort of like saying: "I hope no one is saying having a tracker in your car is worse than having a guy following you around." Sure, it's better. But it's not good either.

Of course it isn't good. This is HN, and we want the web advertising industry to go away. However, that's not going to be the outcome. Antitrust scrutiny in this case means making it more fair to third party advertisers...the people who will be hit most by third party cookie disabling. As much as we want to hate on Google, articles like this won't make them move toward more privacy.

I don't want web advertising to go away.

The issue here is excessively intrusive tracking, not the ads themselves.

Otherwise how are Youtube creators, newspapers, Firefox, etc going to operate with out it?

Companies adding multiple megabytes of JS tools is probably another issue entirely as they often involve a variety of crap like 2-3 ad publishers, content recommendation services (chum), 5 different analytics and automation tools from "marketing", regulatory compliance modals/monitoring, e-commerce tools. And all of this is before the regular JS stuff is added (CNN for ex: adds both jQuery, backbone.js, AND React). Those issues are solved by competent web teams and for certain market segments of mega-firms this likely wont go away any time soon, so the ad blocks (really JS blockers) will remain.

Just like "defund the police" is a stupid self-alienating stance to stake, so is expecting web ads to end.

I haven't see the stats on retargeting, but I wouldn't mind that goes (across 3rd-parties).

But I do see some value in demographic and behavioural ad targeting. If I have to see ads then I'd prefer they be targeted at me. I'm not sure what the solution here is but, outside of pseudo-anonymization.

Because at the end of the day all that matters privacy-wise is identity. I could feed an ad engine locally with my attributes without directly revealing identity, as is largely the case today. But even that is a tradeoff.

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