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Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

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Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#141

Post by dylan604 »

fleddr wrote: post #140
dylan604 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just trying to help you out. They know there are "if you find it cheaper in the next 30 days, we'll refund the difference" policies out there. So those ads are actually much more helpful than you are giving credit. They can't help it you chose poorly and used a site that did not have that policy. /s

That's not the reason you keep seeing ads for products you just bought. Google was aware of your interest in the product yet was unable to track that you actually bought one. So they think you're still looking.

hence the /s at the end of the comment

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#142

Post by fleddr »

gman83 wrote: post #12

I'm curious, with third-party cookies being fased out, and alternatives like FLoC being met with resistance, could this drastically cut the size of Google's revenue's down? If the ads can no longer be accurately targeted, I imagine that would mean the main value of AdWords is no more, and that's the foundation that entire company is built on.

I believe the biggest "victim" of the increasing difficulty of cross-site tracking are content websites.

A content website has nothing to sell, assuming it's not behind a paywall. They are typically funded using general purpose tracking ads. The ads are based on other websites you visit and have nothing to do with the content you're reading.

These websites may face a serious threat, and need an entirely different model. The most straight-forward alternative I imagine to be contextual non-tracked ads. Ads related to the content you're reading.

Other victims are to be found in the shady world of data aggregators. Their entire existence is based on cross site tracking.

Whilst websites and data parties may suffer, Google will continue to hoard data. Almost every website will continue to use Google analytics, Google fonts, Google Tag Manager, the like. This on top of the wide array of consumer products you may use: Android, its various Google apps, Gmail, Youtube, all of it.

It's virtually impossible to avoid Google touchpoints, they will continue to know more about you than you do about yourself. They don't need AdWords for that.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#143

Post by fleddr »

dylan604 wrote: post #141
fleddr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the reason you keep seeing ads for products you just bought. Google was aware of your interest in the product yet was unable to track that you actually bought one. So they think you're still looking.

hence the /s at the end of the comment

Sorry, missed that :)

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#144

Post by efdee »

inopinatus wrote: post #129
tomComb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Was it though? Search kind of sucked before Google came along. Javascript in the browser was a joke. Google Maps and Mail were revolutionary.

I'm not as positive about Google today as I used to be in the past, but I don't feel it's fair to pretend that they didn't help us take giant steps forward.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#145

Post by tgv »

hahahasure wrote: post #138
tgv wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using FF since forever (first Navigator, then a macos variant called Camino, and after it EOL'd, Firefox; tried quite a few others too, but always returned to FF). Never a problem, except of course with websites that don't test if it works on Firefox. > shoot the messenger, it won't fix Firefox bugs or help their market share. Your message doesn't really contribute to it either. If you hate Firefox with a p…

I couldn't access this website with Firefox. Firefox is doing the damage to themselves.

You can't access HN with Firefox? This website loads one simple html file, one style sheet with a handful of media queries, three gifs and a small js file, which only seems to do things like voting and hiding. While FF 3.6 won't do the styling properly, even that ancient version should be able to display the contents.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#146

Post by renewiltord »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #98
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, wait. We add this into the headers, and just expect Chrome to respect it?

Reminds me of when people naively expected "Do Not Track" to be respected lol

We actually respected DNT at an ad tech company I worked at and people still gave us grief for "tracking" them. We literally just 200'd the request immediately for all DNT requests. No processing, no tracking, nothing.

Hilariously, I even opposed removing the code later because I wanted us to be a good citizen but it was practically dead code because people were still calling us evil. They could literally set their UA to play along (or use one that set it by default).

I think we always kept the code in but it only incurred cost and we got blamed anyway. I think, looking back, I should have just removed that piece of middleware since no user ever really cared. It wasn't worth it for the org to pay for code so I could have a clean conscience.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#147

Post by choppaface »

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…

Yes, you can definitely flip my argument or criticize it however you please. But I think what would help decide things is to see the hard $$ numbers on why Google thinks FLoC is actually inventive-compatible. They must have done a study here in order for FLoC to get the OK for launch. Maybe that study is right, maybe it’s wrong. But Sundar has—- several times—- admitted that Google has lost trust, and now Google is trying to sell a big change without showing the whole picture. That’s standard MO at McKinsey, but Sundar is now on a much bigger stage. Given the recent evidence showing how closely Google worked with Facebook to bias ad auctions, I think it’s high time we review how Google assesses incentive compatibility.

While I agree with you that Google paying for serving requests or some other equity mechanism sounds just plain odd, there are few tools to deal with multinational monopolies. Tesla is making bank right now in no small part from carbon offsets and consumer tax benefits—- that’s all because Aramco and big oil won’t diverge from their shareholder interests. Google usually welcomes novel web/social mechanisms and it’s very telling when they so thoroughly refute the interests of news sites. Or try to solve the problem with something crappy like AMP.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#148

Post by jmholla »

magicalist wrote: post #23
gentleman11 wrote: post #9

If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in because it would have given them a bad public image. I don’t think it’s fair that some company gets to force every website maintainer (most aren’t extremely technical and just use Wordpress or something similar) on earth to muddle through documentation for their particular setups to 1) learn it exis…

> If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in FLoC is only opt in for testing the proposal[0]. As a sibling comment says this is technically performative but publicly signals a stance against the proposal. Though we also shouldn't forget that Amazon loves third party tracking and happily falls back to IP address associations if cookies aren't…

Isn't it the opposite. It's opt-out for testing and is supposed to be opt-in when it goes live? I mean, I just disabled it and I am certain I didn't opt-in to it given that I had to go to about:config to have the setting show up.

You can opt-in to actively be a part of FLoC, but if you don't opt-out, Google may randomly choose you to be part of their testing.

Edit: I think your point may have been from the perspective of a website owner. Sorry.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#149

Post by mdoms »

gentleman11 wrote: post #9

If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in because it would have given them a bad public image. I don’t think it’s fair that some company gets to force every website maintainer (most aren’t extremely technical and just use Wordpress or something similar) on earth to muddle through documentation for their particular setups to 1) learn it exis…

If Firefox wants a bigger market share they need a significantly better product. That's just how the world works. I don't use Chrome but I sure as heck don't use Firefox.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#150

Post by [deleted] »

fastball wrote: post #132
kevingadd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO these two things are compatible. Their mesh network is incredibly gross but it's not a privacy violation, it's bad in other ways.

It's almost guaranteed to be a privacy violation unless you think Amazon can write complicated yet bug-free networking code.

[deleted]
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