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Is Google the biggest "beneficiary" here, or is it more that a lot of shady operations were totally shafting people on their data/privacy and so they've finall

Is Google the biggest "beneficiary" here, or is it more that a lot of shady operations were totally shafting people on their data/privacy and so they've finally had to close down or expose themselves to massive legal risks? The significant drop in trackers on EU sites reported here (and not a huge surge in Google trackers on EU sites) suggests to me that it is other adtech/tracker companies that have lost, rather than google gaining. Either way, it is good to see some hard figures on tracking being rolled-back a bit. Now we just need some enforcement to fix the badly-implemented consent-walls (e.g. slate.com).

buboard 8y ago
it is google because they have the largest pot of data which allows them to very granularly target you with confidence. Whatever data the shady small business had, it was probably partial, old and outdated.
wastedhours 8y ago
You're not looking for a surge from Google though - they're already the 1000lb gorilla, what you're looking for is the limitation in competition, which is what's occurring. As with a lot of EU digital regulations, they're essentially centralising power to organisations who have the legal resources to either go through the process (and find loopholes), or the cash to fight it. A lack of competition in the tracking space won't really mean the practice will disappear, but that the organisation who has the biggest consent database will take all the money by default. I might be biased as a marketer, but I'd prefer to have multiple small companies who're tracking limited pieces of info about me across different parts of my web experience (and who may fuck up occasionally), than one huge company knowing 100% of my information. (Edit: as a side note, the linked article is doing something shitty with the scrolling on the site, which is more annoying than semi-targeted advertising to me...)
- blub 8y ago
  The multiple small companies tracking limited pieces of info about you would anyway be happy to sell and share that for money, this is partly how those huge DMP databases are built.
  - wastedhours 8y ago
    You can limit that with different legislation though - the data-sharing and processing parts would do this, without the additional level of explicit consent which is the stumbling block (requiring scale). I'm not advocating in favour of tracking, but the effects of enforcing collecting explicit opt-in consent appears to be centralising power, rather than getting rid of the industry. I'd rather have implicit consent across multiple providers (with processing safeguards and data sharing agreements stating they're only pooling the data amongst their advertisers), than explicit consent with only one behemoth.

buboard 8y ago

it is google because they have the largest pot of data which allows them to very granularly target you with confidence. Whatever data the shady small business had, it was probably partial, old and outdated.

wastedhours 8y ago

You're not looking for a surge from Google though - they're already the 1000lb gorilla, what you're looking for is the limitation in competition, which is what's occurring. As with a lot of EU digital regulations, they're essentially centralising power to organisations who have the legal resources to either go through the process (and find loopholes), or the cash to fight it. A lack of competition in the tracking space won't really mean the practice will disappear, but that the organisation who has the biggest consent database will take all the money by default. I might be biased as a marketer, but I'd prefer to have multiple small companies who're tracking limited pieces of info about me across different parts of my web experience (and who may fuck up occasionally), than one huge company knowing 100% of my information. (Edit: as a side note, the linked article is doing something shitty with the scrolling on the site, which is more annoying than semi-targeted advertising to me...)

blub 8y ago
The multiple small companies tracking limited pieces of info about you would anyway be happy to sell and share that for money, this is partly how those huge DMP databases are built.
- wastedhours 8y ago
  You can limit that with different legislation though - the data-sharing and processing parts would do this, without the additional level of explicit consent which is the stumbling block (requiring scale). I'm not advocating in favour of tracking, but the effects of enforcing collecting explicit opt-in consent appears to be centralising power, rather than getting rid of the industry. I'd rather have implicit consent across multiple providers (with processing safeguards and data sharing agreements stating they're only pooling the data amongst their advertisers), than explicit consent with only one behemoth.