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Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

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Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#231
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Chrome at work and Firefox on personal devices (including my Android phone). As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. In fact, even though presumably there are way more engineers working on Chrome than on Firefox, I guess most of Chrome's engineering effort goes towards benefitting advertisers, not users. While Chrome seems entirely stagnant since I adopted i…

Mozilla claims over 700 of their 750 employees work on Firefox. It's a bit harder to find out the number of people working on Chrome. The founding director remarks that there were 40 engineers working on Chrome mobile in https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-success... . That's obviously just a slice of the whole team. Search results suggest a range of numbers between 23 and 500. There appears to be ab…

I genuinely don't believe that 700 people work on Firefox because if that were true the quality would be much different and things would be done faster.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#232
post #135
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's against the guidelines to be dismissive, but there really is no other response. Especially when you left read the follow-up sentence: > Offloading cognitive effort, such as reminders like these, is a great way automation can assist humanity. Does that pass for journalism? I really don't want to read the rest of the article.

I have my oral care products on subscribe and save. Automation does make my life better by offloading cognitive load. Such automation doesn’t require third party cookies but the article doesn’t make that claim. The article seems pretty reasonable to me actually. It establishes what a cookie is, then contrasts that with what Chrome is doing, then explains the tradeoffs and Google’s claims, then gives the reader option…

I mean, whatever new quirks are being used lead to the same results, so for us endusers it doesn't matter if there will be cookies or not

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#233
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I might have a PI follow that writer for a bit, so I can helpfully send reminders, to illustrate how badly ill-conceived this take is… That’s not a healthy fantasy. The “following” part is especially creepy. There’s a contact the author link on the site. If you care to contact her it’s just a couple clicks away. No reason to hire a stalker. Why are you so angry at the author and not at the people who actually made…

Violating privacy is creepy, full stop.

Yes, that’s true. But fantasizing about hiring someone to spitefully stalk an actual specific person is especially creepy and unhealthy.

I can call out that danger without supporting widespread user tracking.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Chrome loads 1000 tabs a second faster than Firefox, which makes Firefox totally unusable.

You mean Firefox that also gets 90% of its funding from Google ads?

Yeah, but at least it's not chrome or directly benefits google. If China came out with a web browser, I'd use it. Just to starve American spyware corporations of a tiny bit of data.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#235

> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum. fuck off

[flagged]

This philosophy of thinking every opinion deserves and requires reasoned critique while maintaining decorum is worse than any rude words. The opinion expressed by the author does not deserve more than the two words they were generously afforded.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Chrome at work and Firefox on personal devices (including my Android phone). As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. In fact, even though presumably there are way more engineers working on Chrome than on Firefox, I guess most of Chrome's engineering effort goes towards benefitting advertisers, not users. While Chrome seems entirely stagnant since I adopted i…

> as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. Profiles suck. Performance (specifically around video) has been ass for years. Many useful Chrome extensions don't have FF versions. Just off the top of my head.

I use Firefox containers as a replacement for Chrome profiles and I find them to be quite good. The Sidebery addon adds sidebar tab groups where each group can have a different default container, I use it to maintain different sets of sessions for personal and work stuff (GitHub, etc)

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#237
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is not installed on any desktop computer system by default except for ChromeOS that has 3% market share. Everyone that uses Chrome, went out of their way to download it. I personally don’t use Chrome. But I am assuming your answer is - government should stop people from using their own free will?

> Chrome is not installed on any desktop computer system by default except for ChromeOS that has 3% market share. Chrome is installed by default on the handheld computer system most people use, with AFAIK over 50% market share. Given that unfortunately more and more people are using handheld computers as their main or even only computing device, this is very relevant. > Everyone that uses Chrome, went out of their wa…

> Chrome is installed by default on the handheld computer system most people use, with AFAIK over 50% market share

And if that 50% (actually 40% in the US) didn’t have privacy invasive Chrome installed - they would still be running Android which is made by the same company.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#238
post #76

This appears to be the same as this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427227 Top comment on that one was: Key actionable info: to fix this, go to this URL: chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off the toggles on each of the three subpages. Alternatively, go to this URL https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ to fix this permanently.

If enough people switch these settings off, Google will just re-enable them "accidentally" during the next auto-update. Or hide them altogether. This is their business model. They didn't create Chrome out of the goodness of their hearts: it was created to impose their rules on the internet. And since their business model relies on tracking people, that is what they will do. Refusing by deleting Chrome is the only way…

> They didn't create Chrome out of the goodness of their hearts: it was created to impose their rules on the internet.

IIRC, it's the opposite: Chrome was created to prevent other browser manufacturers (in particular, Microsoft) from imposing their rules on the Internet in a way which affected Google websites.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's have an advertising company also have a monopoly on the web browser. What could possibly go wrong?

Chrome is not installed on any desktop computer system by default except for ChromeOS that has 3% market share. Everyone that uses Chrome, went out of their way to download it. I personally don’t use Chrome. But I am assuming your answer is - government should stop people from using their own free will?

For anyone born in the past 12-15 years, their first computing device would almost certainly not be a desktop computer. It would be a mobile device, and Chrome is omnipresent there.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is not installed on any desktop computer system by default except for ChromeOS that has 3% market share. Everyone that uses Chrome, went out of their way to download it. I personally don’t use Chrome. But I am assuming your answer is - government should stop people from using their own free will?

A chromium-based browser is installed on every Windows desktop, which gives Google a huge market share under which to effectively and unilaterally dictate web standards

No one who is targeting the US market is going to ignore iOS users.
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