4 ms·

Well, they can track people across sites that use Google Fonts, so maybe having a larger set of characters and encouraging more use gives them a farther trackin

Well, they can track people across sites that use Google Fonts, so maybe having a larger set of characters and encouraging more use gives them a farther tracking reach.

kps 10y ago
https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...
- lallysingh 10y ago
  For the lazy, a snippet indicating that no such tracking occurs: What does using the Google Fonts API mean for the privacy of my users? The Google Fonts API is designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to what is needed to serve fonts efficiently. Use of Google Fonts is unauthenticated. No cookies are sent by website visitors to the Google Fonts API. Requests to the Google Fonts API are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, so that your requests for fonts are separate from and do not contain any credentials you send to google.com while using other Google services that are authenticated, such as Gmail. In order to serve fonts quickly and efficiently with the fewest requests, responses are cached by the browser to minimize round-trips to our servers.
  - pflats 10y ago
    Google also said that their new messaging app would be end-to-end encrypted by default, and then quickly changed their mind when business reasons prevailed. Business reasons will always prevail. But even beyond that: >For the lazy, a snippet indicating that no such tracking occurs: Requests to the Google Fonts API are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, so that your requests for fonts are separate from and do not contain any credentials you send to google.com while using other Google services that are authenticated, such as Gmail. That's not what the snippet says. It is a technical statement, not a privacy statement. It doesn't mean they can't track you, it means it's a tiny bit harder to track you. Nothing in there says "we don't cross-reference these data" or "these data aren't used for tracking purposes" or anything else. Just that your Google account information isn't sent to the font servers. More relevantly, the Google Fonts privacy policy links to the general Google privacy policy, which doesn't have any special "if you're using Google Fonts we collect a whole lot less than this" subsection. They might be using the data. They might not be. They might not be using the data today but decide to start using it tomorrow.
eveningcoffee 10y ago
Exactly! This is in my opinion only reason they do it.
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  Let me elaborate. I offer two situations and you can choose which one of them is more plausible. a) What should we do next? Our cash is burning! Well, lets use countless human hours to make a beautiful font to make the world a better place! b) How can we reach to more traffic that might be currently not visible to us? Well, maybe we should design a really beautiful font that everyone likes and host it in our server? Sounds like a plan, lets do it!
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    Google has too much, not too little cash.
    - omarchowdhury 10y ago
      He may mean the cash is burning in that there are employees that need things to do at Google.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    How about c) We're making products supporting an unprecedented amount of locales and there's no font family out that that covers them all and still looks consistent, we're going to have to make it ourselves. Hey, if we open it up then there will be even more international content out there to put AdSense on!
    - eveningcoffee 10y ago
      Yes, this one looks also possible. Thank you for this.
mifreewil 10y ago
A completely valid point, even if you get downvoted for perceived cynicism.
- teej 10y ago
  For it to be a valid point, it has to be a sensible strategy or position for Google to take. Do you actually think that under the list of goals and objectives for this project there was a bullet point that was like "* Better user tracking across the web". There are loads of reasons why it makes sense for Google to do this project ahead of user tracking. It's possible - anything is possible really - but does it make sense? Even if this was remotely close to their goal, it still doesn't make sense. They already have Google Analytics on basically every website in existence. Investing millions of dollars in an extremely robust font to increase web tracking by 0.0000000001% seems like a terrible investment.
  - MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
    You're saying that Google, THE tracking company, is possibly sitting on this huge pipeline of data from IPs connecting to their CDN downloading fonts and they're just not doing anything with it? I would have a very hard time believing this.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- daenney 10y ago
  But nothing requires you to link directly to the font on their CDN. The sources, the whole build pipeline, everything is available and you can host it all by yourself. The font they created has nothing to do with tracking you, it just so happens that if hosted on Google Fonts they can also do that. But that's a feature of Google Fonts, not Noto.
  - MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
    Pure speculation, but I would guess the vast majority of people do NOT self-host. I use their CDN as it's faster and much easier to set up, just link in your CSS or whatever.
acdha 10y ago
If that was their goal, why would it be open source and licensed for self-hosting?

Well, they can track people across sites that use Google Fonts, so maybe having a larger set of characters and encouraging more use gives them a farther tracking reach.

kps 10y ago

https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...

lallysingh 10y ago
For the lazy, a snippet indicating that no such tracking occurs: What does using the Google Fonts API mean for the privacy of my users? The Google Fonts API is designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to what is needed to serve fonts efficiently. Use of Google Fonts is unauthenticated. No cookies are sent by website visitors to the Google Fonts API. Requests to the Google Fonts API are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, so that your requests for fonts are separate from and do not contain any credentials you send to google.com while using other Google services that are authenticated, such as Gmail. In order to serve fonts quickly and efficiently with the fewest requests, responses are cached by the browser to minimize round-trips to our servers.
- pflats 10y ago
  Google also said that their new messaging app would be end-to-end encrypted by default, and then quickly changed their mind when business reasons prevailed. Business reasons will always prevail. But even beyond that: >For the lazy, a snippet indicating that no such tracking occurs: Requests to the Google Fonts API are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, so that your requests for fonts are separate from and do not contain any credentials you send to google.com while using other Google services that are authenticated, such as Gmail. That's not what the snippet says. It is a technical statement, not a privacy statement. It doesn't mean they can't track you, it means it's a tiny bit harder to track you. Nothing in there says "we don't cross-reference these data" or "these data aren't used for tracking purposes" or anything else. Just that your Google account information isn't sent to the font servers. More relevantly, the Google Fonts privacy policy links to the general Google privacy policy, which doesn't have any special "if you're using Google Fonts we collect a whole lot less than this" subsection. They might be using the data. They might not be. They might not be using the data today but decide to start using it tomorrow.

eveningcoffee 10y ago

Exactly! This is in my opinion only reason they do it.

eveningcoffee 10y ago
Let me elaborate. I offer two situations and you can choose which one of them is more plausible. a) What should we do next? Our cash is burning! Well, lets use countless human hours to make a beautiful font to make the world a better place! b) How can we reach to more traffic that might be currently not visible to us? Well, maybe we should design a really beautiful font that everyone likes and host it in our server? Sounds like a plan, lets do it!
- JBReefer 10y ago
  Google has too much, not too little cash.
  - omarchowdhury 10y ago
    He may mean the cash is burning in that there are employees that need things to do at Google.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  How about c) We're making products supporting an unprecedented amount of locales and there's no font family out that that covers them all and still looks consistent, we're going to have to make it ourselves. Hey, if we open it up then there will be even more international content out there to put AdSense on!
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    Yes, this one looks also possible. Thank you for this.

mifreewil 10y ago

A completely valid point, even if you get downvoted for perceived cynicism.

teej 10y ago
For it to be a valid point, it has to be a sensible strategy or position for Google to take. Do you actually think that under the list of goals and objectives for this project there was a bullet point that was like "* Better user tracking across the web". There are loads of reasons why it makes sense for Google to do this project ahead of user tracking. It's possible - anything is possible really - but does it make sense? Even if this was remotely close to their goal, it still doesn't make sense. They already have Google Analytics on basically every website in existence. Investing millions of dollars in an extremely robust font to increase web tracking by 0.0000000001% seems like a terrible investment.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
  You're saying that Google, THE tracking company, is possibly sitting on this huge pipeline of data from IPs connecting to their CDN downloading fonts and they're just not doing anything with it? I would have a very hard time believing this.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
daenney 10y ago
But nothing requires you to link directly to the font on their CDN. The sources, the whole build pipeline, everything is available and you can host it all by yourself. The font they created has nothing to do with tracking you, it just so happens that if hosted on Google Fonts they can also do that. But that's a feature of Google Fonts, not Noto.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
  Pure speculation, but I would guess the vast majority of people do NOT self-host. I use their CDN as it's faster and much easier to set up, just link in your CSS or whatever.

acdha 10y ago

If that was their goal, why would it be open source and licensed for self-hosting?