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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

#261
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…

Well at the moment I can block 3rd party cookies, can I block the Privacy Sandbox?

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

#262
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…

Cookies / analytics is used for far more than just PPC tracking.

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

#263
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would chrome survive as a business?

I guess ideally either Chrome or Firefox would be organized as a charitable trust with an endowment, its stated mission to service users of the web, and the EFF given a permanent seat on its board of directors. How to get from here to there, I don't know.

Firefox is owned by Mozilla Corp, owned by Mozilla Foundation, which is a non-profit -- and Mozilla has a sizable budget.

> How to get from here to there, I don't know.

You literally are there!

Sure, it's easy to criticize Mozilla for having "wrong priorities", being "pragmatic about EME", Firefox OS, losing market share, etc.

But simply saying a new board would fix things seems a bit naive.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You strangely assume that the advertisement budget will remain constant in a world where advertisement is less effective.

The very reason that adverts are then worth less, is because advertisement budgets will go down, given that advertisements provide less return for their money.

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

#265
post #199

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.

Nothing like a little bit indirection to make it not true. It's blatantly obvious all the ways G can build a profile of someone by fingerprinting. Unfortunately it's not exactly an elevator pitch to make it a common knowledge thing.

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

#266
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Just like "defund the police" is a stupid self-alienating stance to stake, so is expecting web ads to end. Don't go there, please. At the very least it reveals you don't understand what "defined the police" means, and at worst you're insulting those who are living in constant fear and daily trauma. There are better analogies to use.

"Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish The Police." --The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> etc. No, pretty much just those. There are very few extensions available on new builds of mobile Firefox. I got excited when the blog team announced that the were more available on the nightly buil, but after jumping through loads of hoops I found out there's just a couple of new ones and most extensions are still unavailable.

You most likely found some community suggested collection add-ons list. You can install any of the Firefox add-ons on mobile by adding them to your own curated collection. The real question though is will all of them work?

No, I created my own empty list then tried to add extensions to it as described in the Firefox dev blog post.

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

#269
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…

You're nuts if you think that giving Google (the largest web advertiser in the world) a proprietary monopoly on user tracking instead of having an open standard is somehow better.

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

#270
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Just like "defund the police" is a stupid self-alienating stance to stake, so is expecting web ads to end. Don't go there, please. At the very least it reveals you don't understand what "defined the police" means, and at worst you're insulting those who are living in constant fear and daily trauma. There are better analogies to use.

I find attempts of forbidding discussions on certain topics because they are sensitive to specific classes of people offensive and dangerous to free thought and open discourse, two of the pillars of democracy.

Furthermore, I reject the claim that a significant number of people are living in constant fear and daily trauma in any western democracy. Such an extraordinary claim requires solid proof - statistical proof that people are suffering psychological and/or physical trauma.

Now regarding the original claim itself, there's certainly those that take it literally: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol....

And according to Wilfred Reilly it's actually happening: "In Los Angeles, similarly, the police budget was reduced by $150,000,000 “following calls to defund the police after George Floyd’s May 25 death.” By November 12th of the past year, these cuts had already resulted in the dissolution of the department’s entire Animal Cruelty Task Force, and more notably of the Sexual Assault/Special Victims unit “that investigated disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein."

Did you really think that such a clear statement supported by politicians and mass media will not have any effects in the real world?

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