Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by v7p1Qbt1im » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

sundvor wrote: post #107

0xy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They just have really good PR and much less touch points with consumers.

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

#252

Post by imtringued » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #231

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…

> 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? You do know that Google is a web advertising company first? If they're proposing something, you can be damned sure that it was vetted first by people who know how to use it for ad tracking - because that's literally their…

Google can probably track you without cookies if you use Google Chrome. If they remove alternative methods of tracking they end up eliminating competitors.

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

#253

Post by teddyh » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

ngold wrote: post #199

baybal2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they already did lawyerising, as written above. They grabbed onto the wording of PII as " personally identifiable information" that information is identifiable, but not personally identifiable, so it is ok to use for ads.

So we knows it's you, but you are a integer.

“I am not a number! I am a free man!”

— The Prisoner

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

#254

Post by iggldiggl » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:41 AM UTC

dralley wrote: post #140

gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine the kind of Stupids that are steering mozilla, but they definitely want people to move to chrome. They disabled many loved extensions by power users for absolutely no reason at all! after those power users spend years bending to all their capricious changes. moving to webextension? done. moving to a new mobile UI? done. But, they still want you to move to chrome no matter what. We should take firefox…

>They disabled many loved extensions by power users for absolutely no reason at all! The reasons were stated repeatedly. They rewrote the mobile browser engine, which broke extension API support since all of the internal APIs changed, and they didn't have the resources to support both browsers simultaneously for a long period of time, so they prioritized the most-used extensions first and will enable more extensions…

One problem is that it doesn't work as simply as "all APIs this add-on uses are supported, so let's enable it" – they instead still insist on explicitly whitelisting every individual add-on. So a few really popular extensions are whitelisted and the long tail is left behind, even if it might work perfectly well or at least useable enough.

I have for example one small extension that I maintain, which is basically little more than a glorified page script which therefore doesn't use any special extension APIs at all. Despite that, it took months for it to be enabled, and if it wasn't as popular as it is I might still be waiting even today.

> the new browser is significantly snappier and uses less power in my experience.

Ha! From a cold start, on my phone launching the new Firefox (with less add-ons) and loading a page seems to take approximatively twice as long as on Firefox 68, and still ~50 % more than even on Firefox 55.

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

#255

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:44 AM UTC

ngold wrote: post #199

baybal2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they already did lawyerising, as written above. They grabbed onto the wording of PII as " personally identifiable information" that information is identifiable, but not personally identifiable, so it is ok to use for ads.

So we knows it's you, but you are a integer.

Reminds me of this:

"So here I was now, two years just to the day of being kicked and clanged into Staja 84F, dressed in the height of prison fashion, which was a one-piece suit of a very filthy like cal colour, and the number sewn on the groody part just above the old tick-tocker and on the back as well, so that going and coming I was 6655321 and not your little droog Alex not no longer."

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

#256

Post by vijayr02 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:46 AM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #249

onion2k wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If advertisers can't violate one's privacy, that simply means they will pay less to the websites one uses.. Why? Businesses ad spend budgets aren't going to be reduced simply because ads no longer track people. The same amount of money will go to advertisers. So long as ad companies can deliver a better return than other forms of advertising that competes for those budgets the online ad companies will be fine.

Of course not. If advertisement be less capable of generating new customers, then it is less valuable. The amount of money one can sell an advert for to the advertiser is of course related to expected return value for the advertiser of that ad. If it be lower, due to less efficient targeting, then he will not be willing to pay as much for the same advertisement.

Or, alternatively, they will spend more (input) to produce the same amount of leads (output)? Practically, their margins shrink while the websites maintain revenue.

To be clear, I'm not saying the above effect will definitely happen, only pointing out that other outcomes are possible. In practice it will be some combination of the two.

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

#257

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:50 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #217

underslung wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about consistency and intent -- these observations do not extend to conspiracy tier thinking. What is the primary purpose of the X-Client-Data header if not for some unplanned future-proofing? Masquerading about it does not add to credibility

It's for tracking which chrome experiments are enabled, allowing chrome to check the impact of new chrome features by enabling them for only some populations and comparing the results. As it says in the white paper: "This header is used to evaluate the effect on Google servers - for example, a networking change may affect YouTube video load speed or an Omnibox ranking update may result in more helpful Google Search r…

That's describing it short-term at best, as some have pointed to you already.

Also, I don't see the important word "only" in the passage you're quoting, so given the usual MO of profit-driven corporations I'm just going to assume they omit other purposes of which there's at least a ton.

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

#258

Post by onion2k » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:50 AM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #249

onion2k wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If advertisers can't violate one's privacy, that simply means they will pay less to the websites one uses.. Why? Businesses ad spend budgets aren't going to be reduced simply because ads no longer track people. The same amount of money will go to advertisers. So long as ad companies can deliver a better return than other forms of advertising that competes for those budgets the online ad companies will be fine.

Of course not. If advertisement be less capable of generating new customers, then it is less valuable. The amount of money one can sell an advert for to the advertiser is of course related to expected return value for the advertiser of that ad. If it be lower, due to less efficient targeting, then he will not be willing to pay as much for the same advertisement.

The amount of money one can sell an advert for to the advertiser is of course related to expected return value for the advertiser of that ad.

The value something provides is relative to other things you might buy instead. If I have an ad budget of $1m, and I can't spend it on targeted ads then I'm going to spend it on the next best thing - if that's non-targeted ads then websites will still get my $1m.

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

#259

Post by v7p1Qbt1im » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #72

victorhooi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're projecting the HN crowd a bit here. The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do. I'm not making a value judgement on that, it's simply how it is. People want to use services like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or Google search/Gmail/Google Maps that have the functionality they enjoy. If those companies can show them targeted ads vs random…

I think it is clear that the public cares about privacy but only when they are fully educated about what a given platform is doing. The public is not reading the privacy policies, or looking at the app permissions or do anything really to educate themselves on all the ways Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc are abusing their data But if a high profile news story comes out about some privacy issue they are outraged about…

The public cares about privacy, yes. But only as long as its presence doesn‘t inconvenience them in any way.

People hate the GDPR pop ups. Most are badly designed (probably on purpose) and make it easy to accept all and difficult to customize/reject all. Most people are just going to click accept because it makes the box disappear faster.

Let‘s say we have the new Apple opt-in rules for Facebook. There‘s a pop-up some day asking users: „do you want facebook to be able to track you?“ many people will say no. But only because it‘s really easy/frictionless and the app presumably functions as normal.

So primarily users want to do want users want to do. They don‘t care about tracking/ads as long as avoiding them isn‘t completely simple.

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

#260

Post by aqfamnzc » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #74

adriancr wrote: post #62

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?

I haven't had third party cookies enabled in Firefox for a decade. Google is coming late to this.

I hear this argument a lot. Yes, you can turn off third party cookies, and I have as well, but the power to control the default behavior is very important. What we should be asking ourselves is "Does the average user turn off third party cookies?"

This is the same reason Facebook is throwing such a fit over apple's new prompt. It makes it easy and likely for the average user to disable something without having to dig through settings.