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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

#341

Post by ogre_codes »

aww_dang wrote: post #301
kergonath wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d think you’d find a broader consensus around “tracking must die” than “advertising must die”. Though advertising itself is often obnoxious and motivation for large-scale fraud.

Ad-fraud is a disturbing reality. HN's anti-business consensus is a disturbing nightmare.

> HN's anti-business consensus is a disturbing nightmare.

I see this tact in almost every thread about Google and Facebook. Right along with "HN (users) are against any advertising". This sort of ad-hominem approach to debate is non-constructive and frankly bullshit.

HN advertises. It's owned and operated by an actual profit making business. Nobody complains about that. People don't mind because fundamentally we know when we leave HackerNews, YCombinator isn't following us.

The consensus is largely not anti-business, it is against tracking.

If I'm anti-business, does that make you a Google shill? Let's try to talk about the topic and not the attitude of the people here.

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

#342

Post by 0xy »

joshuamorton wrote: post #230
0xy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact it is undisclosed to users, unjustified (they could get the same result by sending the header to GTM) and impossible to disable make it nefarious. Google have a header being sent to advertising domains that can be used for tracking purposes , Google didn't ever disclose this fact, and Google made it impossible to disable. Already that's nefarious. "Just trust us, we won't abuse this!" is not good enough, con…

> they could get the same result by sending the header to GTM Do you mean Tag manager, or some other GTM? I also, and this'll be seriously counterintuitive, doubt that they could be quite as conscientious of user data if they were handled via GTM. To sketch out the concern here: Chrome telemetry that is not used to identify people and personal ad preferences/data tied to an individual user probably shouldn't be sent…

The disconnect here seems to be that your position is that burying it in an obscure highly technical document is "disclosure", whereas 99.9999% of Chrome users don't even know this document exists, let alone how to find it or even how to read it.

That practice is worse than Facebook. Facebook at least makes some effort to explain privacy implications to users in human readable text that most people can understand.

So I still feel comfortable calling it an undisclosed and impossible to disable feature. Because for the vast majority of users, this is the case. It's not disclosed to them unless they go digging through websites for highly technical whitepapers they don't understand and can't read.

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

#343

Post by joshuamorton »

0xy wrote: post #342
joshuamorton wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could get the same result by sending the header to GTM Do you mean Tag manager, or some other GTM? I also, and this'll be seriously counterintuitive, doubt that they could be quite as conscientious of user data if they were handled via GTM. To sketch out the concern here: Chrome telemetry that is not used to identify people and personal ad preferences/data tied to an individual user probably shouldn't be sent…

The disconnect here seems to be that your position is that burying it in an obscure highly technical document is "disclosure", whereas 99.9999% of Chrome users don't even know this document exists, let alone how to find it or even how to read it. That practice is worse than Facebook. Facebook at least makes some effort to explain privacy implications to users in human readable text that most people can understand. So…

It's also mentioned explicitly, in plain language, in the privacy policy[0], which links to the whitepaper. This section, or something functionally equivalent has been present since (at least, that's as far back as you can check) 2014, still in plain language. The 2014 version links to a 2012 chromium blog post announcing that announced the fancy new field trials infrastructure[1]. Please stop lying about this it was not, and has not ever been "buried" or "undisclosed".

Of course, the privacy policy doesn't explain the precise methodology of how the telemetry is sent, so there's no "oh its done via an http header", because it's a nontechnical explanation with the goal of informing users how their data is being used, and not of giving them details of the method.

[0]: https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/, search "field trials"

[1]: https://blog.chromium.org/2012/05/changes-to-field-trials-in...

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

#344

Post by ROARosen »

jefftk wrote: post #319
ROARosen wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies It doesn't need to be worse for it to be unacceptable to privacy-concerned folks which don't trust Google. It is just about the same to them since an untrustable entity like Google is stewarding it. Which BTW makes it worse since the solution is basically putting trust in Google which just brings on more and undefined privacy issues.

The argument in the linked post is not that Privacy Sandbox is "unacceptable to privacy-concerned folks which don't trust Google" but "unacceptable to ad tech companies who want to be able to continue to use third-party cookies". > the solution is basically putting trust in Google None of the privacy sandbox proposals require trusting Google: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... (Disclosure…

Fair enough, but by trust I meant trust in Google's stewardship of the initiative, not trust in the sense of them actually handling data. That is what -justly or not- concerns some of my friends.

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

#345

Post by neolog »

sdenton4 wrote: post #186
neolog wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the bad consequences be?

One example: The road from security to revenue is a bit windy. So suppose chrome gets a revenue crunch after getting spun off, and lays off a bunch of the security group. Well, it turns out that security group is actually handling security for ALL of the browsers, because security is expensive, and none of the browsers are really making money, and chrome is open source. So now you've got reduced security in all of th…

Sure, could happen. Or maybe more of the relevant players share the load, the way they do with the kernel.

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

#346

Post by curryst »

madrox wrote: post #126
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's time to recognize that the company simply need not exist in it's present form. If Google was required to spin off Chrome as an independent company, there would be no antitrust issue, and privacy protections Chrome made would not also include anti-privacy features designed to feed Google's ad business. The reality is, Google needs to be broken up. Every fine they get makes that clear.

Playing devil's advocate, how is Google & Chrome different from, say, Apple & App Store? Thinking about iOS like a browser, arguably what Privacy Sandbox does is not that different from iOS 14's AppTrackingTransparency Framework. Both require the operator of the internals not to abuse their position for there to be fair play. The most generous thing I could say is that it feels different. However, Apple has a stronge…

> Thinking about iOS like a browser, arguably what Privacy Sandbox does is not that different from iOS 14's AppTrackingTransparency Framework

Apple's AppTrackingTransparency Framework harms a market that Apple is not a part of. That specific action doesn't have any monopoly connotations in my mind because it solely benefited the product that was changed. There are no knock on effects where now Apple Maps is worth more.

Also, in this case, the consumers that are harmed by Google's alleged monopoly are people who are buying ads, not people using Chrome. I don't do anything with ads, but the impression I got from other people is that it's much easier for a consumer to switch phones than it is for an advertiser to just not advertise with Google.

I do think Apple has monopoly issues, I just don't think ATT is part of it. That was a legitimate response to consumer demand for privacy.

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

#347

Post by nly »

ogre_codes wrote: post #155
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 hope no one is saying Privacy Sandbox is worse than third party cookies Sort of like saying: "I hope no one is saying having a tracker in your car is worse than having a guy following you around." Sure, it's better. But it's not good either.

Having a tracker in your car is far worse than having a guy following you around.

The latter doesn't scale to millions of stalkees with almost zero cost, and is far less conspicuous.

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

#348

Post by devlopr »

kmeisthax wrote: post #196
devlopr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would see mydomain.com/adnetwork then.

The reason why subdomains work is that you can make the root domain go to your own site, while the subdomain goes to your ad provider. If you use a CNAME it's literally just a matter of publishing another DNS recod and you're done. Moving to a subdirectory requires setting up a reverse proxy on your existing infrastructure, and keeping it up to date every time your ad network switches domains. Hell, on a lot of platf…

You wouldn't need to. Let's say they gave you a php script (any server side processing language) you could place it anywhere and it would download new ad content and show it as a first party ad.

Easier than changing a cname.

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

#349

Post by hakfoo »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #203
madrox wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it isn't good. This is HN, and we want the web advertising industry to go away. However, that's not going to be the outcome. Antitrust scrutiny in this case means making it more fair to third party advertisers...the people who will be hit most by third party cookie disabling. As much as we want to hate on Google, articles like this won't make them move toward more privacy.

Nothing is free however. If advertisers can't violate one's privacy, that simply means they will pay less to the websites one uses, and that will lead to its quality deteriorating, or even more extreme content filters to appease advertisers and remain afloat.

This is what sort of baffles me.

Ad spend is not going down. Yet publisher revenue is stagnant or worse. Look at every media outlet scaling back and/or crying poverty. This is the gateway to most of the worst of the advertising ecosystem. Nobody WANTS sleazy/creepy/loud/excessive ads on their sites, because it's their brand being ran down in the end. But it's seen as the only way to keep their heads above water.

I suspect the real story here is the growth of the middlemen and platforms. In 1990, when you called up your local newspaper and ordered a quarter-page ad for $50, the publisher got every cent of it. Now, you buy $50 of PPC ads, it gets routed through several layers of cross-selling and arbitrage, and $5 is actually distributed to publishers.

I'm surprised nobody's built a mutually owned co-op ad network. That would allow the participants to recapture most of the value lost to third party intermediaries. With so much less revenue leakage, they could offer tamer adds that paid as well as the current 82 banners, full tracking, and a chumbox design.

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

#350

Post by adriancr »

mikeiz404 wrote: post #193
jay_kyburz wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can browsers look up a different server addresses to send requests to that way? I didn't think that's how DNS worked but I'm no expert. Advertisers can't trust content people to forward requests because it would be too easy to fake them.

No I don’t think so. DNS only works on the domain part of the url. However a server like nginx can be set up to proxy requests matching a specific url pattern to another server. This would be a bit more work than adding a DNS entry and referencing that though.

Or setup cdn to redirect certain paths to the adserver and mark those paths as nocache
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