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Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

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Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#261

Post by thereddaikon »

robbedpeter wrote: post #47
jsiepkes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d be seriously ashamed at this point if I was a Google employee assigned to AMP. "No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood." [1] [1] https://despair.com/products/irresponsibility

This is why principles are important. Living by a well considered and thoughtful set of beliefs, secular or otherwise, has an impact on the world. Even if things look hopeless, your actions contribute to the way life unfolds for everyone else. Even if things look trivial, not engaging in minor infractions against your beliefs is withholding that single drop from the flood. I won't ever use tiktok, and speak against i…

That was beautifully put. You articulated what I think a lot of have been feeling but have a hard time putting into words.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#262

Post by thereddaikon »

magicalist wrote: post #248
windexh8er wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the floodgates haven't opened with all of the insight you may want doesn't mean it's not valid - re: "bullshit meter". Google has an army of the best in legal and part of their play is limiting this information from ever being seen. I'm curious, what would be enough validation to pass your sniff test? And are you saying you think this is being overblown?

> I'm curious, what would be enough validation to pass your sniff test? From my first post: > but this would be a lot more convincing with the source emails entered into the record :)

That's what discovery is for. You don't usually see evidence like that in the initial filings.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#263

Post by lotsofpulp »

ehnto wrote: post #259
lotsofpulp wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not a material nuance? An individual’s data is not leaving Google’s computers. Is anyone harmed or anyone’s privacy violated even an ad buyer is allowed to choose to restrict ads to ad recipients likely to have certain characteristics?

It's immaterial because the result of using the data is the same, the advertiser doesn't actually want my name and email, they just want to use information about me to target me better. Imagine instead of web advertising, it were phone calls. A random bicycle company calls you up one day and says, Hey Buddy, we know you were in a bicycle accident recently, we have a deal on new bicycles right now! You ask them where…

Society has a long history targeted advertising before google. I doubt that is against the law.

There is quite a bit of difference in identifiable information about you being given to whoever wants to buy it, and giving someone the ability to show an ad to people of certain criteria.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#264

Post by collinmanderson »

magicalist wrote: post #216
amelius wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a “nice comparative boost.” That's it. Webmasters should give all visitors with a Chrome user agent a loading penalty of 1 second and a popup saying that the website runs faster on Firefox. I said it before on HN, but the idea was condemned, and I partially agreed, but now it seems (at least to me)…

> Webmasters should give all visitors with a Chrome user agent a loading penalty of 1 second and a popup saying that the website runs faster on Firefox it's for ads: > Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays so would need to limit the +1 second for ads to be equivalent, but you could just run "ads" for ad blockers instead :)

More info on 1-second delay when discussed last year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25449389

It started as a 1-second delay for all ads, but then they found a technical way to allow for ads made with AMP to load sooner.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#265

Post by ehnto »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #263
ehnto wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's immaterial because the result of using the data is the same, the advertiser doesn't actually want my name and email, they just want to use information about me to target me better. Imagine instead of web advertising, it were phone calls. A random bicycle company calls you up one day and says, Hey Buddy, we know you were in a bicycle accident recently, we have a deal on new bicycles right now! You ask them where…

Society has a long history targeted advertising before google. I doubt that is against the law. There is quite a bit of difference in identifiable information about you being given to whoever wants to buy it, and giving someone the ability to show an ad to people of certain criteria.

It's not against the law no, which is the point of discussion here I think. I believe it should be, which might help explain some of my opinions above.

I don't think it's accurate to liken ubiquitous tracking of almost everyone across all their devices, to be the same as targeted advertising from the past. It's an entirely new behavior on an enormous, society size scale. It's having tangible negative externalities, remembering that advertising doesn't just include product placements. So you get those negative effects even without the privacy violation.

I'm not trying to compare this with privacy violations, I'm more trying to argue that for the issue being discussed in the antitrust, the technicality that it's not a privacy violation doesn't actually change much except that it's not illegal. The issue still exists.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#266

Post by no_time »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #121
matheusmoreira wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ban advertising straight up. This will kill Google, Facebook, Twitter and all the other companies ruining the web. Not one tear will be shed at this point. Also, make it a huge liability to store any kind of personal information. Apply heavy taxes on every single bit stored. These companies should be trying really hard to forget all about us the second they send our HTTP responses, not hoarding our personal info…

You know as well as I do that that will never happen and would probably destroy the economy. As bad as these companies are, flat out killing them is not a good idea.

If the economy only stands because of people consuming things they never would've bought on their own it deserves to burn. This mentality is killing us along with the planet.

I really want to see a society wide experiment on banning ALL forms of advertising, be it digital or physical.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#267

Post by easrng »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #251
easrng wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they sell specially-formatted ad spots that are supposed to look like results, not generic display ads.

They can continue to do that and it doesn't need to be part of the broader Google Ads entity that places ads on other websites and operates an even broader ad exchange Think about Pinterest, Quora, or FB, for example, they have "native ads" but they don't operate Internet-wide ad exchanges

Wasn't that what lettergram was saying? They specifically were talking about AdWords (regardless of whether that's the current name), which is Google's search ads system, not all of Google Ads.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#268

Post by jallbrit »

oezi wrote: post #90
djrockstar1 wrote: post #26

159-169, about Google being able to decrypt end-to-end encrypted WA (WhatsApp) communications is terrifying. The fact that Google has known this for over 5 years and made no effort to notify the public is what really got me. What's fucked up is that Google Drive backups are the only ones WA offers, and naturally everyone wants their messages backed up so they turn it on, not knowing the implications.

And what are the implications? Is Google analyzing uploads to Google Drive to serve you targeted ads? That would be a big breach in trust.

The PDF reads (pg. 62):

> In addition, the Google Drive website, the Google Drive mobile application, and the Google Drive Terms and Privacy policy all failed to disclose to users that Google as a third party had access to their WhatsApp communications. The Google Drive terms of service at the time even permitted Google the ability to use its access to users’ private WhatsApp communications in Google Drive to sell advertising.

The last sentence suggests that yes, Google could have analyzed your uploads to serve you targeted ads.

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#269

Post by jallbrit »

ls15 wrote: post #146
lordofgibbons wrote: post #62

I hope we can keep politics out of this thread, but I couldn't help but notice all of the plaintiff states are dominantly Republican states. Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present?

> Any ideas why that would be and why the "blue" states aren't present? Most of Google's political donations go to democrats. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/90-perc...

For anyone else wondering, the article seems to suggest that it's not Google donating, but the employees:

> From 2004 to 2017, $15 million donated by employees of Google and its related companies went to Democrats, and just $1.6 million went to Republicans. Alphabet was created in 2015 as an umbrella company for these companies.

The article's source [1] verifies that the data is about the companies' employees, not the companies themselves.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212055101/https://www.govpr...

Re: Google digital advertising antitrust litigation [pdf]

#270

Post by weird-eye-issue »

easrng wrote: post #267
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can continue to do that and it doesn't need to be part of the broader Google Ads entity that places ads on other websites and operates an even broader ad exchange Think about Pinterest, Quora, or FB, for example, they have "native ads" but they don't operate Internet-wide ad exchanges

Wasn't that what lettergram was saying? They specifically were talking about AdWords (regardless of whether that's the current name), which is Google's search ads system, not all of Google Ads.

Google Ads is a single entity that does both and AdWords is now known as Google Ads. So what he was actually referring to is ambiguous...
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