Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#191

Post by beebeepka » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 12:38 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #137

inopinatus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Far from being the greater good, Google is remarkably pig-headed, often downright incompetent outside of selling ads... As is the nature of dualities, the web has benefit immensely from Google's investments even if it would have chartered a different (and in your opinion, a better) course had Google not existed in the first place. Someone pointed out, you couldn't say the same for Amazon. As for incompetence: imho,…

Google was great until 2004 or so. I think uncle Sam made them an offer they could not or simply did not want to refuse. Then this Schmidt guy came and did the actual damage

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#192

Post by Havoc » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #90

lisper wrote: post #88

Wow, the bias in this article is unbelievably blatant: "[Amazon is] preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe" Compare with, e.g.: "Amazon is taking steps to protect its user's privacy by blocking Google's heavy-handed overreach in leveraging its Chrome browser to spy on user's…

Yeahhhh, but Amazon makes a ton off their own ad business and is trying to turn everyone's personal devices into a mesh network they own. They don't give af about user privacy.

> They don't give af about user privacy.

That part seems to be the only universal truth these days.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#193

Post by mr_toad » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

beebeepka wrote: post #191

ignoramous wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Far from being the greater good, Google is remarkably pig-headed, often downright incompetent outside of selling ads... As is the nature of dualities, the web has benefit immensely from Google's investments even if it would have chartered a different (and in your opinion, a better) course had Google not existed in the first place. Someone pointed out, you couldn't say the same for Amazon. As for incompetence: imho,…

Google was great until 2004 or so. I think uncle Sam made them an offer they could not or simply did not want to refuse. Then this Schmidt guy came and did the actual damage

Google was great until after they won the second browser war and gradually became used to power.

They’re a lot like a revolutionary government that gradually becomes corrupt and as bad as the regime they overthrew.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#194

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

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…

>> 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.

True, as are some of the counterpoints. I don't think it contradicts OP's point though. FLoC is designed by Google, for Google's needs. Some/most of those are genuinely privacy related, the way that they're related is via advertising/targeting/tracking... which Google rely on for all their revenue.

Amazon, meanwhile, doesn't benefit from FloC much... hence conflict.

These datasets are being used as defining advantages by both companies. Why should amazon want to adopt/feed google's new analytics project?

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#195

Post by ActorNightly » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #90

lisper wrote: post #88

Wow, the bias in this article is unbelievably blatant: "[Amazon is] preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe" Compare with, e.g.: "Amazon is taking steps to protect its user's privacy by blocking Google's heavy-handed overreach in leveraging its Chrome browser to spy on user's…

Yeahhhh, but Amazon makes a ton off their own ad business and is trying to turn everyone's personal devices into a mesh network they own. They don't give af about user privacy.

They very much do. When is the last time you heard about any private data leak from Amazon?

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#196

Post by joemaller1 » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

> across what’s left of the open web.

Gut punch

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#197

Post by josephg » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #137

inopinatus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Far from being the greater good, Google is remarkably pig-headed, often downright incompetent outside of selling ads... As is the nature of dualities, the web has benefit immensely from Google's investments even if it would have chartered a different (and in your opinion, a better) course had Google not existed in the first place. Someone pointed out, you couldn't say the same for Amazon. As for incompetence: imho,…

> webrtc, which Google standardized and open sourced, is likely the single most important innovation on the interwebs (in terms of impact) just ahead of Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest.

Thats a really weird claim. We can point to some real ways google has benefited the web: Their search engine is excellent, and was a huge leap forward when it was released. SPDY/QUIC are set to become the next HTTP2/HTTP3. And google chrome has made the browser a much more powerful and compelling platform over the last few years. If anything they're investing too much - and hurting the web by making it hard for other browser vendors to keep up.

But webrtc?? Webrtc is still mostly a toy, barely used outside of video conferencing. Its insanely overcomplicated for any other use case. And I still haven't seen a compelling reason to use it for anything else. Decentralized communication doesn't buy you much when the site itself is still loaded from a centralized server.

More important / impactful than XMLHttpRequest? No, I think not.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#198

Post by warkdarrior » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #110

anchpop wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s my understanding of how it works too. could you explain?

Rather than the browser sending a summary of your history, it calculates a cohort ID. That ID is sent to websites, and the website then has the job of associating IDs with interests. So instead of building a profile on specific users, the website (or ad network) builds profiles on cohort IDs. Users can change IDs, or mask theirs altogether if they wish.

So we'll have to trust Google's browser will respect all website's headers that request not to be included in the cohort tracking. Just like Google respected Safari privacy settings. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/time-make-amends-googl...

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#199

Post by o8r3oFTZPE » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

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…

"... it would stand little chance against the competing platforms."

Little chance of what. It sounds like this is framing the web as some sort of commercial venture. And Google is the gatekeeper. A venture where they can effectively make sites "appear" or "disappear" from the web and they decide what the public will or not see. Google watches the traffic, shows what is "popular" and buries the rest. Everyone begs for Google's favour to show their site "at the top, on page one". If not an organic listing, then Google will let anyone pay to be "at the top, on page one" in the form of an ad that looks much like a search result.

That's a very dysfunctional "public platform". (The Google founders wrote about how dysfunctional it was to sell out that way in their 1998 paper announcing their new, alternative search engine.) No one ever agreed the only way the "public platform" would be useful is for a few big corporations to control it. That is a recent idea held only by those who stand to (continue to) benefit from its realisation.

News Corp is bad, Google is bad, Facebook is bad, but c'mon this does not mean the web has to be bad. If one cannot see the difference between "the web" and a few big corporations, then some "reframing" is defintely in order. The web is a medium not a destination. Google, Facebook and others trying to emulate them are all acting as middlemen on the medium.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#200

Post by inopinatus » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 2:55 AM UTC

efdee wrote: post #144

inopinatus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many of my primary sources of information have been obliterated by Google; they've also taken giant steps backwards, one case in point being the abridgement of the DejaNews archives, and frankly, no, search did not suck prior to Google: I always had better results writing queries for Altavista, and to this day I continue to use more specific predicates in the same fashion because results are often irrelevant otherwise - predicates that are, depressingly, having an ever-decreasing impact on the outcome.

One consequence was the preceding generation of search engines being harder to drive for everyday folks, and a relevance approximation thereby more immediately accessible on the consumer scale, but let's face that the algorithmic approach also spawned a whole bottom-feeding industry of SEO snake oil vendors and their merry-go-round of clickbait, malware, and global-scale consumer surveillance. The incentive to hang yourself from a single keyword means that Google became the foster parent of AOL's Eternal September.

My personal feeling on the matter of Gmail and Google Maps is that they are best attributed to their personal creators (Paul Buchheit, and the Rasmussens, respectively), not the corporation. The seed of Google Maps was an acquisition, after all, and many other technologies I've seen offered up in neighbouring threads as proof of Google's benevolence were either acquisitions, or ones where substantial parts of any credit must be shared (webrtc has been mentioned; it is both).

Javascript in the browser still sucks mightily, and although it's not an argument I particularly wish to stir up there's plenty to say in support of that perspective. What's more, many of the best solutions are the product of independent/small/OSS groups, although I will confess a soft spot for TypeScript. Consequently, and especially w.r.t Gmail, Youtube, Maps, and , Chrome starts to look like the Lotus Notes of today: a thick client, developed by a large firm, in support of its specific service & platform offerings.