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Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

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Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#231

Post by pjerem »

rixed wrote: post #222
pjerem wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like mostly everyone, I was amongst those people who heavily recommended Google (really cool) products to friends & family. Retrospectively, I feel so stupid to have promoted « free products paid by an advertising company » for years. I know Google duped everyone on this so I don’t feel to be stupid alone. But still, in hindsight, there were no possible future where Google could stay on top without doing dirty things…

I certainly hate ads more than the average person, probably even more than the average hell, but it feels strange to hear people sometime speak about Google as if targeted ads were the worse thing that could happen on the internet. I've seen censorship, identity theft, money laundering, online harassment, online crime, information theft on very large scale to target, arrest and hang political opponents... All of whic…

You know, I'm not saying that Google is evil or that it behaves with bad intentions. And I have no problem with targeted ads as a product. It's a pretty efficient product that helps a lot of business to have their chance. I acknowledge that. But at what cost ?

For me, Google is "evil" for what it is, not what it does. And I think that Google is an utterly dangerous company with such unbelievable amount of precious data that could change the course of the history in a really bad way if it falls into the wrong hands in the future.

Who knows who will control Google in 5, 10 or 50 years ? Nobody knows. But we can be sure that in 50 years, the data that Google collects about us today will be lying on some hard disk drive, ready to be used for who knows what.

Google is able to define and store indefinitely "who you are". And the human history is full of times where "who you are" or even "who you were" were some really dangerous information that threatened your liberty or your life.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#232

Post by josefx »

kalleboo wrote: post #229
rixed wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me realize how much I would actually love that, somehow.

Yeah it would have been an interesting world if Java hadn't sucked so bad (and MS hadn't tried to kill it) and the web had remained a hypertext document platform and all the deep interactivity ended up in applets and Java Web Start apps. Both pros and cons to that.

Java, Flash, Silverlight, lets not pretend that Java was the only attempt. Sad part is that flash and java plugins got killed over security exploits while the always growing API surface of current JavaScript implementations still gets consistently owned in Pwn2Own style competitions.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#233

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Ironically if someone stated the same about Microsoft, I wouldn't be able to read their comment by now.

The more the things change, the more they stay the same

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#234

Post by pjmlp »

josefx wrote: post #232
kalleboo wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it would have been an interesting world if Java hadn't sucked so bad (and MS hadn't tried to kill it) and the web had remained a hypertext document platform and all the deep interactivity ended up in applets and Java Web Start apps. Both pros and cons to that.

Java, Flash, Silverlight, lets not pretend that Java was the only attempt. Sad part is that flash and java plugins got killed over security exploits while the always growing API surface of current JavaScript implementations still gets consistently owned in Pwn2Own style competitions.

No worries, we can replicate the experience with WebAssembly now.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#235

Post by pjmlp »

ineedasername wrote: post #204
_0w8t wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all assumes that without Google this would not happen. But I fail to see why is this so. Linux happened without single corporation controlling it.

Linux was helped along massively when IBM embraced it and invested a $billion in it in 2000. RedHat benefited significantly from funding by large corporations in it's early days. Undoubtedly these companies helped shape the Linux ecosystem. A single company doesn't control it, but as big as Google is a single company doesn't control the web either.

Not only IBM, also Compaq and the daily hated Oracle were early contributers.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#236

Post by pjmlp »

foobiekr wrote: post #219
efdee wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Search sucks now. Searching on google is like talking to someone with no long term memory. It's like nothing prior to the last, maybe, 24 months exists.

Also one needs a black magic ceremony to be able to come up with a search expression that actually works without Google jumping in and help me by rewriting it.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#237

Post by josefx »

pjmlp wrote: post #234
josefx wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java, Flash, Silverlight, lets not pretend that Java was the only attempt. Sad part is that flash and java plugins got killed over security exploits while the always growing API surface of current JavaScript implementations still gets consistently owned in Pwn2Own style competitions.

No worries, we can replicate the experience with WebAssembly now.

Last I heard you still had to call out into JavaScript, manipulating the same old DOM to get anything done.

Maybe someone could set up a library that implements Swing on top of a HTML Canvas? Just waiting for all the classes to download would help with that nostalgic feeling.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#238

Post by pjmlp »

josefx wrote: post #237
pjmlp wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No worries, we can replicate the experience with WebAssembly now.

Last I heard you still had to call out into JavaScript, manipulating the same old DOM to get anything done. Maybe someone could set up a library that implements Swing on top of a HTML Canvas? Just waiting for all the classes to download would help with that nostalgic feeling.

Already done.

https://leaningtech.com/cheerpj/

https://teavm.org/

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#239

Post by josefx »

pjmlp wrote: post #238
josefx wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I heard you still had to call out into JavaScript, manipulating the same old DOM to get anything done. Maybe someone could set up a library that implements Swing on top of a HTML Canvas? Just waiting for all the classes to download would help with that nostalgic feeling.

Already done. https://leaningtech.com/cheerpj/ https://teavm.org/

The cheerpj implementation of swing seems to work quite well. Just some lag when it loads resources not quite asynchronously and hard crashing sometimes when I switch the look and feel to Motif. Better than I expected.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#240

Post by robin_reala »

stock_toaster wrote: post #205
yesbabyyes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's specified here: https://www.w3.org/TR/permissions-policy-1/#policy-controlle... There is a non-exhaustive list of features/APIs here: https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-feature-policy/blob/master/... Each feature takes an allowlist, specifying which, if any, origins can use the feature.

there is apparently no way to define a default disable either, so to turn off all the random features, the header becomes huge. https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-permissions-policy/issues/1... What is happening in w3c?!

A cynical view would be that Google paid large sums to advertise Chrome on prime time TV while sideloading it with Flash and Java installs, which lead to an outsize user base, which lead to outsize influence at W3C on specifications.
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