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Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

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Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#331

Post by loveistheanswer »

llarsson wrote: post #298
theshrike79 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Web advertising was a $319 billion dollar industry in 2019. Does anyone wonder who may be lobbying their government to scrutinize Google and offer themselves for interviews for articles like this? You do know that Google is a web advertising company first? If they're proposing something, you can be damned sure that it was vetted first by people who know how to use it for ad tracking - because that's literally their…

Oh, they care about privacy just the way they care about security: valuable and actionable data about you should belong to them. Their security people are top-notch. They guard your data very diligently. If they did not, you would not trust them with intimate details about your life. Your privacy is the same. They will keep your data private *from their competitors*, but they will fully enjoy using it for their own p…

>Oh, they care about privacy

>Your privacy is the same. They will keep your data private from their competitors, but they will fully enjoy using it for their own purposes.

By definition, that is not privacy.

privacy: the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.

To use Google products, one must first sacrifice their privacy to Google.

Saying Google cares about its users privacy is like saying a slave master cares about their slaves freedom.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#332

Post by yepthatsreality »

minikites wrote: post #116
hashkb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "open web" only barely ever existed; MSIE killed it and Chrome is just a better weapon in the hands of a next generation monopoly.

And now with Facebook and Twitter, the idea of the "open web" is irrelevant to most people since they get everything they want or need from those two places.

This will bounce back. What happened is that you have a large percentage of people who chose not to advance their computer skills. Instead they "mastered Microsoft Office suite" for a bullet point on a resume and were presented the internet as a suite of websites. These people are our peers.

However as more and more people are taught about coding and networking we will see a demise in the size of the former and the embrace of the open web again. They will be advertised the web as a platform for networking services and products.

Of course this all will take place by stopping Google and other corporations from monopolizing the web with help from our locked-in peers. ;)

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#333

Post by jefftk »

davidfstr wrote: post #325
madrox wrote: post #142

I hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies, or is trusting this article to form an opinion about it. Web advertising was a $319 billion dollar industry in 2019. Does anyone wonder who may be lobbying their government to scrutinize Google and offer themselves for interviews for articles like this? Does anyone think the result of beating up Project Sandbox will be more radical privacy pro…

I actually like the idea of Privacy Sandbox. It appears to enable sites which depend on ad revenue to continue to exist while seeking to eliminate the usual problem with current adtech: third party tracking. I wrote up a more nuanced version of this opinion here: * Privacy Sandbox: Google's answer to privacy-conscious advertising -- https://dafoster.net/articles/2021/02/04/privacy-sandbox-goo...

I like your post. It does conflate Privacy Sandbox with one of the specific proposals, however: "there still exists an algorithm which is fed a user’s browsing history and that algorithm is used to put the user into an advertising cohort. However the interesting change with Privacy Sandbox is that this algorithm is run locally within the user’s browser, and never actually needs to transmit the user’s browsing history over the internet. Instead only a code for the identified cohort is transmitted, and a remote ad server can use that cohort directly." is describing https://github.com/WICG/floc

Another component of Privacy Sandbox is Turtledove (https://github.com/WICG/turtledove), where advertisers can tag a user as belonging to a "interest group" and then later on can target ads against that interest group. Which groups a user is in is maintained entirely by the browser, and never sent to the server, And any ads that are rendered based on interest group targeting have to execute in a special "fenced frame" which prevents them from leaking information to the surrounding page or to the advertiser in a non-aggregated way.

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, so I'm following these proposals. Speaking only for myself)

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#334

Post by jsnell »

contravariant wrote: post #297
jsnell wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Killing 3rs party cookies isn't anti-competitive The problem is that when it comes to determining what's anti-competitive, yours is not the opinion that matters. According to the article, multiple US states, a US House submicommitee believe it is anticompetitive and now a UK regulator is also investigating whether it is. This is not a hypothetical like you think. It is what the people in power actually are on recor…

I'm having some trouble following your argument. You seem to be accusing me of the thing I'm against on the basis that my opinion isn't the one that matters.

Ok, then we're in the same boat because I also don't understand what you mean.

You're asserting that "killing 3rd party cookies is not anti-competitive". You presented no proof about this, it is just an opinion. Your entire point about what the valid options are is based on this assertion.

On the other hand, several US states and a US house committee apparently think otherwise, and the UK regulators think it at least merits investigation.

And yes, when evaluating whether there is regulatory risk from "killing 3rd party cookies", obviously the group from the previous paragraph is going to matter more than yours.

I am not "accusing you of the thing you're against". I'm not even sure what "you're against" or what the accusation is supposed to be.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#335

Post by Blikkentrekker »

onion2k wrote: post #285
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You strangely assume that the advertisement budget will remain constant in a world where advertisement is less effective. The very reason that adverts are then worth less, is because advertisement budgets will go down, given that advertisements provide less return for their money.

You strangely assume that the advertisement budget will remain constant in a world where advertisement is less effective. It's not an assumption. I've worked in web stuff, including a lot of ad-driven businesses and businesses that buy ads, for a little over two decades. If one technology is removed businesses will spend the money on a different one. They will never step back and say "Oh well, I guess we'll have to s…

> They will never step back and say "Oh well, I guess we'll have to spend less on advertising now."

Of course they do, what weird assumption is this?

If we lived in a world where advertisement was twice as effective at generating new revenue, far more money would be spent on it; if we lived in a world where it did nothing, no money would be spent on it and companies would search for other means to get new customers than advertisement.

It is certainly not as though the advertisement budged that companies have simply be a number they cling to on religious principle, rather than a number they have decided upon based on their perceived value of advertisement.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#336

Post by contravariant »

jsnell wrote: post #334
contravariant wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having some trouble following your argument. You seem to be accusing me of the thing I'm against on the basis that my opinion isn't the one that matters.

Ok, then we're in the same boat because I also don't understand what you mean. You're asserting that "killing 3rd party cookies is not anti-competitive". You presented no proof about this, it is just an opinion. Your entire point about what the valid options are is based on this assertion. On the other hand, several US states and a US house committee apparently think otherwise, and the UK regulators think it at least…

Seems our communication has broken down somehow. So at this point I'm not sure how to continue this discussion, it might be better to just cut our losses. Your earlier questions are loaded in such a way that I'm afraid I don't see how I could begin to answer them in a way that still makes sense.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#337

Post by iggldiggl »

iggldiggl wrote: post #254
dralley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They disabled many loved extensions by power users for absolutely no reason at all! The reasons were stated repeatedly. They rewrote the mobile browser engine, which broke extension API support since all of the internal APIs changed, and they didn't have the resources to support both browsers simultaneously for a long period of time, so they prioritized the most-used extensions first and will enable more extensions…

One problem is that it doesn't work as simply as "all APIs this add-on uses are supported, so let's enable it" – they instead still insist on explicitly whitelisting every individual add-on. So a few really popular extensions are whitelisted and the long tail is left behind, even if it might work perfectly well or at least useable enough. I have for example one small extension that I maintain, which is basically litt…

Postscriptum: To be fair, after investigating a little more it seems that the cold start penalty with the new Firefox seems likely due to fixing a bug that meant uBlock and similar add-ons were previously unable to intercept the first few network connections that were happening right during startup.

So on the one hand fixing that bug makes sense and has some value, but on the other hand and in practice the increased startup time still feels rather quite annoying, too, given that my phone isn't the latest and fastest model.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#338

Post by davidfstr »

jefftk wrote: post #333
davidfstr wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like the idea of Privacy Sandbox. It appears to enable sites which depend on ad revenue to continue to exist while seeking to eliminate the usual problem with current adtech: third party tracking. I wrote up a more nuanced version of this opinion here: * Privacy Sandbox: Google's answer to privacy-conscious advertising -- https://dafoster.net/articles/2021/02/04/privacy-sandbox-goo...

I like your post. It does conflate Privacy Sandbox with one of the specific proposals, however: "there still exists an algorithm which is fed a user’s browsing history and that algorithm is used to put the user into an advertising cohort. However the interesting change with Privacy Sandbox is that this algorithm is run locally within the user’s browser, and never actually needs to transmit the user’s browsing history…

> I like your post. It does conflate Privacy Sandbox with one of the specific proposals, however: [...] https://github.com/WICG/floc

Thanks for the clarification Jeff.

> Another component of Privacy Sandbox is Turtledove (https://github.com/WICG/turtledove), [...]. Which groups a user is in is maintained entirely by the browser, and never sent to the server

Interesting. I'll plan to read up on this tonight and amend my post from what I learn.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#339

Post by eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 »

Google234 wrote: post #173
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but honestly you have no idea how good you have it right now. Do me a favor: Grab an Android phone with all the Google crap still on it, factory reset it, and actually read the obnoxious ways in which Google asks you to give it permission to track you. "We want to improve your search results!!! Click yes!" The small print: and thereby enable us to log EVERYWHERE you walk, drive, commute ALL DAY LONG. And that examp…

You do get better search results with location tracking though...

If I want (which I don't in general!) Google to serve me location specific results I will just enter the desired location into Google Maps along with the keywords.

No need to be tracked for that all day and possibly get implicated into random crimes because I happened to be near them.

That's an insanely disproportionate cost compared to the effort it spares of having to enter a location into Maps once every few weeks.

Re: Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny

#340

Post by tadfisher »

blub wrote: post #270
tadfisher wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like "defund the police" is a stupid self-alienating stance to stake, so is expecting web ads to end. Don't go there, please. At the very least it reveals you don't understand what "defined the police" means, and at worst you're insulting those who are living in constant fear and daily trauma. There are better analogies to use.

I find attempts of forbidding discussions on certain topics because they are sensitive to specific classes of people offensive and dangerous to free thought and open discourse, two of the pillars of democracy. Furthermore, I reject the claim that a significant number of people are living in constant fear and daily trauma in any western democracy. Such an extraordinary claim requires solid proof - statistical proof th…

> I find attempts of forbidding discussions on certain topics because they are sensitive to specific classes of people offensive and dangerous to free thought and open discourse, two of the pillars of democracy.

Note that the topic of this discussion is Internet advertising. I would love to hear your opinion on how comparing the Internet advertising industry to the struggle for racial justice is promoting free thought and open discourse. Actually, I wouldn't, because any such comparison is absurd and is not initiating the conversation in good faith.

> Furthermore, I reject the claim that a significant number of people are living in constant fear and daily trauma in any western democracy

Note that I made no such claim. I would, however, love to hear your experience as a BIPOC in America.

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