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Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

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Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#121

Post by judge2020 »

tomComb wrote: post #119
choppaface wrote: post #106

This is a great example of why Google FLoC is not incentive-compatible with consumers nor business owners. Amazon (like Facebook) has a monopoly on ad targeting on their target properties—- properties they own. Google FLoC is Google’s attempt to (further) monopolize their target properties—- the web at large, which Google does NOT own. Google does NOT pay to service the traffic they generate. Google does NOT pay to f…

Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got. Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would sta…

> but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms.

To give some evidence for this, Google pushed hard for PWAs - it serves their interests since they can focus on one platform for their desktop platforms, but also means that on Desktop (via Chrome) and Android each web app can just install themselves without having to distribute a native package or go through an app store.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#122

Post by SquareWheel »

gpm wrote: post #78
SquareWheel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the browser is choosing to track users browser history and report a summary statistic on it to anyone who asks It doesn't work that way at all.

Really? Because that is how googles documentation says it works: https://web.dev/floc/#how-does-floc-work

Nowhere in this document does it claim that a summary of your browser history is being sent to websites. It explains the actual process of how cohort IDs are generated and used.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#123

Post by MisterPea »

tomComb wrote: post #119
choppaface wrote: post #106

This is a great example of why Google FLoC is not incentive-compatible with consumers nor business owners. Amazon (like Facebook) has a monopoly on ad targeting on their target properties—- properties they own. Google FLoC is Google’s attempt to (further) monopolize their target properties—- the web at large, which Google does NOT own. Google does NOT pay to service the traffic they generate. Google does NOT pay to f…

Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got. Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would sta…

> Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons

My understanding was Google works a ton on open source and essentially making "the internet" better so that people will ultimately use Google more (since Google is the backbone of the internet) and therefore consume more ads.

All of these tech advancements definitely helps the world more than it helps Google but I'm failing to know why/how FLoC helps the community more than it does Google? Not saying Google is in the wrong to do things out of self-interest, but this scenario is a little different

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#124

Post by gpm »

SquareWheel wrote: post #122
gpm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Because that is how googles documentation says it works: https://web.dev/floc/#how-does-floc-work

Nowhere in this document does it claim that a summary of your browser history is being sent to websites. It explains the actual process of how cohort IDs are generated and used.

A cohort id is literally a summary statistic...

I think the problem here is just one of language, a summary statistic is a number calculated from a set of data that gives you some idea of the contents of the data, but condenses it in a way that you can't reproduce the original data. Common examples for numeric data sets are things like mean, mode, median, standard deviation. Common examples for data sets consisting of a finite list of strings (such as browser history) would be things like average length, character frequency, count, etc. The cohort id generated is unambiguously such a summary statistic.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#125

Post by dcow »

tomComb wrote: post #119
choppaface wrote: post #106

This is a great example of why Google FLoC is not incentive-compatible with consumers nor business owners. Amazon (like Facebook) has a monopoly on ad targeting on their target properties—- properties they own. Google FLoC is Google’s attempt to (further) monopolize their target properties—- the web at large, which Google does NOT own. Google does NOT pay to service the traffic they generate. Google does NOT pay to f…

Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got. Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would sta…

> would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms

Citation needed. What proprietary platforms would have taken hold if not for the grace of gmail?

> Your suggestion that Google pay sites for the traffic they generate should (sic.) like that ridiculous News Corp/Australian shakedown of Facebook and Google

Facebook is complying: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/facebook-to-lift-a... because hey, sharing the pot is better than no pot.

I think the point is that nobody would go to Google if they didn't need to look something up on Wikipedia. So while Google helps users discover content and funnel them towards sites, Google would be 100% useless without the content that ultimately drives the traffic. The status quo, where Google lays 100% claim to the traffic and gets to control monetization, is frankly not in anybody's interest. So why should we accept it?

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#126

Post by teawrecks »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #29

What I don't get about the reporting on this topic: Isn't all this opt-out stuff just necessary while Google is testing FLoC and it'll be opt-in(!) after it leaves Origin Trial phase? Or is this Google employee straight up lying* here? https://twitter.com/Log3overLog2/status/1384337637763387394?... * I don't suspect he his.

I read those tweets 4 times and still don't see anything to convince me it will be opt in after leaving origin trial.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#127

Post by teawrecks »

tyingq wrote: post #40
jasonvorhe wrote: post #29

What I don't get about the reporting on this topic: Isn't all this opt-out stuff just necessary while Google is testing FLoC and it'll be opt-in(!) after it leaves Origin Trial phase? Or is this Google employee straight up lying* here? https://twitter.com/Log3overLog2/status/1384337637763387394?... * I don't suspect he his.

I don't think he's straight up lying, but I do think the truth is probably more than what he's saying. Like perhaps using AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Sign In, etc, will include a buried implied "opt in" for your site at some point. Google is quite good at rolling out changes slowly enough to spread out any outrage. Watching the progression of ads take over their SERP pages, it was very slow and subtle. No ads,…

Yeah, I read "sites will opt-in" as "sites are free to not use google products".

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#128

Post by loudtieblahblah »

tomComb wrote: post #119
choppaface wrote: post #106

This is a great example of why Google FLoC is not incentive-compatible with consumers nor business owners. Amazon (like Facebook) has a monopoly on ad targeting on their target properties—- properties they own. Google FLoC is Google’s attempt to (further) monopolize their target properties—- the web at large, which Google does NOT own. Google does NOT pay to service the traffic they generate. Google does NOT pay to f…

Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got. Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would sta…

Google's investment in the web is just like Microsoft's "Embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy, just far more sophisticated and nuanced. Just like the new Microsoft's so-called new-found embrace of Linux, open standards and interoperability. It's all a sham.

Garbage like AMP, or flexing their dominance in the search market to force websites to comply with this or that or risk delisting, is garbage.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#129

Post by inopinatus »

tomComb wrote: post #119
choppaface wrote: post #106

This is a great example of why Google FLoC is not incentive-compatible with consumers nor business owners. Amazon (like Facebook) has a monopoly on ad targeting on their target properties—- properties they own. Google FLoC is Google’s attempt to (further) monopolize their target properties—- the web at large, which Google does NOT own. Google does NOT pay to service the traffic they generate. Google does NOT pay to f…

Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got. Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would sta…

On the contrary, the end-to-end federated Internet was doing just fine before Google came along, and will do just fine, perhaps better, when it's gone and no longer trying to co-opt every god-damn standards process for their own preferences. No-one has a monopoly on innovation: most inventions are driven by necessity, and large companies stifle genius, they don't foster it. Far from being the greater good, Google is remarkably pig-headed, and often downright incompetent outside of selling ads; even the usefulness of their flagship search is in decline.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#130

Post by h_anna_h »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #32
dylan604 wrote: post #25

Why do we believe the Googs will actually honor this flag? If it's just an HTTP header, the browser can be made to just act like it's not there. All of these "flags" are essentially honor policy level things (just like robots.txt), but if the thing is not even told to look for the flag, there's nothing stopping from doing exaclty what is being asked not to do.

They've been respecting robots.txt and tracking opt-outs for years, right? Just one whistleblower and it's over. Why risk it? Also: Afaik it's opt-in after it leaves Origin Trial phase [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/Log3overLog2/status/1384337637763387394?...

Not that long ago there was a story about the google analytics opt out addon at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout not doing anything.
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