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EU antitrust regulators say they are investigating Google's data collection
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MagnumPIG 7y agoJust now??
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Razengan 7y agoSomewhat related, a thing I found suspicious, though not surprising, the last time I tried it: Try Googling for how to block all Google Analytics and related services in your Hosts file. Does it seem harder to find a simple list of IP addresses + instructions than it should be? While Google Search results quality has gone down across the board in the last 3 or so years, it seemingly tries particularly hard to pretend it doesn’t understand what you mean with queries like these.
- anchpop 7y agoWhy would Google put itself under insane risk from anti-anticompetitve regulation and huge bad PR just to prevent a tiny minority of users from blocking google analytics?
- StuffedParrot 7y agoThis is hardly unusual for them; they removed the ability to blacklist sites from domains because people were blacklisting commercial sites.
- Semaphor 7y agoDo you have any source for that? Otherwise, it’s just as much conjecture as the other claim.
- StuffedParrot 7y agoI recommend googling :)
- mortehu 7y agoThere's not going to be a simple list of IP addresses for any service behind an ever changing global collection of load balancers shared with a number of other services.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoDo you get better results for that with other search engines?
- kevinh 7y agoWhen I type "block google analytics hosts file" into Google, the first three results are guides on how to do that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pujjad 7y agoThis might help: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts Apart from adware and malware it offers to block url's falling into other categories like fakenews, social, gambling, and porn.
- Zren 7y agoGoogling "hosts zero" should give you a good block list. Google is rarely the only thing people want to block, so it makes sense that there isn't $company specific instructions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743202 https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/
- dannyw 7y agoI hope part of this investigation revolves around AMP and Google's tracking and analytics on AMP sites...
- edgyquant 7y agoamp is so annoying. Just link to the sites no need to track (can't they just do it with js) and then the number of people who then post them to Reddit or Facebook because they copy the results link the whole thing is infuriating.
- 14 7y agoI was forever frustrated with my iPhone and safari when I would search something and a reddit link would come up with the result I wanted to see. Click it and would get the amp link open and at the bottom of the screen I would get a pop asking me to download the reddit app but it is impossible to close it without actually going to the reddit site which is what I want in the first place. The end result after being frustrated for long enough, I finally went into settings and set safari search to use Duckduckgo. I hope amp dies.
- mistermann 7y agoWait, amp does that, I thought Reddit itself was the culprit!
- creato 7y agoReddit is the culprit, amp pages don't inherently have such high level logic as this built into them. Reddit chose to make their amp pages behave this way.
- petre 7y agoIt's still useful for bypassing paywalls. I don't care if media orgs like nytimes use it, I care when the average joe blog or website uses it and it becomes annoying.
- cinquemb 7y agoAt this point, why does the EU even bother with Google? What's stopping them from just funding their own "Google" and forcing all their subjects to use them?
- peteretep 7y agoIf funding your own Google was enough to build Google Search, then people would use Bing.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> If funding your own Google was enough to build Google Search, then people would use Bing. Some people do use Bing. The reason more people don't is that there isn't a lot of reason to. Even if you can get the results to be as good as Google, actually making them better is hard. And it's just trading one giant tech company with privacy issues for another, so that's no advantage either. People need a reason to switch away from the incumbent. But if you fund the development as public domain research and open source code, that's a different story. Now you're putting it within the capacity of even medium sized organizations to do their own indexing and run their own search with quality results. Instead of two competitors, you open it up to potentially hundreds or thousands. If the Wikimedia Foundation or similar started doing search indexing, people might actually trust them more on privacy than they do Microsoft or Google. And the more of them there are, each running their own fork of the code, the harder it is for SEO spammers to pollute the results, and the more advantage the little guys have over an incumbent that spammers will still continue to specifically target as long as they continue to have high market share. If the code was available for anyone to adopt or modify, you could also get some potentially interesting new domain-specific search engines. There isn't a lot of high quality competition in the video search space, for example, and if there was then that would help to erode the dominance of YouTube by making videos hosted elsewhere more findable. You would also be likely to see it displacing Google Custom Search pretty quickly if it was free to adopt. And what's the cost? An amount of money less than they've received from Google in fines? The worst case is that it only helps a little instead of a lot. (And it wouldn't hurt to do the same thing against Windows considering what Windows 10 is doing on the privacy front.)
- cinquemb 7y agoI'm not saying it has to be any good, but if the CCP can force the unwashed masses into their home grown solutions, I don't see why the EU can't as well.
- hollerith 7y agoBecause the citizens of the EU wouldn't put up with it?
- cinquemb 7y agoIdk, if they put up with their pensions being invested in neg interest rate euro junk now, I don't see how some DPI and tech providers that may have questionable quality/service that they are in charge of is any worse. Might as well keep squeezing…
- pushpop 7y agoI think you misunderstand the role of the EU
- cinquemb 7y agoWho cares what their "role" is? Isn't it whatever they can enforce and get away with?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sojmq 7y agoEvery time someone says "I think the EU is overreaching here" the response always is "the EU literally has no power at all" Actually you might be right: it's really Germany and France pulling the strings here.
- ithinkso 7y agoThis is such a strange comment. I had no idea that anti EU rhetoric escalated so much that it is being compared to China. I mean, of course there are US/EU disputes, even more when the tariffs started, but communist party?
- telaelit 7y agoFinally. Google should be broken up, they have WAYYY too much power
- bsder 7y agoAgreed. At this point I can't run a private email server because Google simply will not deliver the emails anymore. Being able to simply dictate who can do what on the internet solely because they can undercut everybody's price (aka give away email free in return for mining your data) is far too much power.
- Bombthecat 7y agoHuh? I run a private email server... Took a ton of work though. But it works fine? Are those mails marked as spam? Or what happens?
- bsder 7y agoYes, they are now marked as spam. As I am the sole person to ever use this server and I have been sending to some of those emails since almost as long as gmail has even existed, the fact that they are now marked spam is simply an admission that Google doesn't actually give one shit about accuracy and solely trains their ML networks on things that bring them revenue.
- jefftk 7y agoHas your IP changed during that time? How do you have SPF and DKIM configured?
- jacquesm 7y agoThese questions don't help. I get that you're trying to troubleshoot the OPs mail server and are trying to figure out what might be done to get their mail delivered again. But that's a form of victim blaming if that server was never used to send spam and the OP is not sending out spam their mail should not be classified as spam and if it is that is clearly uncompetitive behavior by Google because the difference between incompetence and malice is something for Google to illustrate, not for the rest of the world to bend over backwards to accommodate their demands.
- foolzcrow 7y agoBreak them up
- gator-io 7y agoI've always been amazed that very few organizations question why Google Analytics is free. Sites are literally handing Google a list of targeted visitors their competitors can advertise to.
- nolok 7y agoJust to be super clear: Google Analytics is not free, the entry version with a limited a visitors/visits it can logs per day is free, then you have to pay to get the full version. Delivering a quality free product to get companies to sign for the expansive one when their needs increase is a very common marketing system, and allows to keep control of the market despite being vastly out of price. Works for desktop app, mobile app, web services, ... I say this as someone who once had to sign for the full version for a web property I was working at. This is a matter where people are quick to over react so let's be super clear: I am NOT saying the limit is placed at a reasonable level, nor that companies absolutely need to have the paid version and can't extrapolate enough from the free version data (they absolutely can), nor that Google isn't majorly benefitting in other way than full version sales (they do). What I'm saying is that "the base version is free and the full version is paid" is a very common thing that doesn't by itself mean anything nefarious is taking place.
- open-source-ux 7y ago"that doesn't by itself mean anything nefarious is taking place" I don't believe that Google is intentionally doing nefarious things either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't subject them to close scrutiny over their date collection practices. Whether Google Analytics (GA) is free or not is beside the point. The free version of GA may limit what GA users see, but that doesn't stop Google from capturing far more data than they expose. This is a company that tracks users on an industrial-size scale that no other online company can match. And yet despite that, most developers are more likely to rush to Google's defence rather than question those data collection practices. (Does a multi-billion company with an army of lawyers need developers to defend it?) I've said this many times: the hypocrisy that runs through the programming profession when it comes to online tracking really knows no end.
- goatinaboat 7y agoYawn. They have been “investigating” for what, a decade now? But never take any action and Google ignores them and becomes more egregious every day, because they know this. Same with Google’s tax situation. What happened to those GDPR fines of 4% of global turnover? Looked good on paper but it’s an open secret now that the regulators have no teeth.
- kryptiskt 7y agoEU has fined Google €8.2B so far. Google might not have gotten the hint yet, but it's not for lack of trying.
- tcd 7y agoFines are the cost of doing business, you need to do more than that to see meaningful change.
- anoncake 7y agoWhat do you expect the EU to do, dissolving companies for the slightest infraction without giving them the opportunity to change their behavior?
- colejohnson66 7y agoSome people here, it seems, would actually prefer that. I personally don’t, but it is a thing some people want.
- goatinaboat 7y agoI expect them to levy the 4% fine and if it’s not paid start arresting senior executives. Instead they issue token fines and allow the companies to just keep appealing them indefinitely. No wonder Google’s not taking these complaints even vaguely seriously, why would they?
- knolax 7y agoI wonder how long until we get an EU version of Google/Yandex/Baidu.
- input_sh 7y agoYou mean like Qwant (French) and Startpage (Dutch)?
- jokoon 7y agothere was a scandal where it was shown qwant had its search result from bing not holding my breath DDG seems like a good contender
- lebaux 7y agoDDG, Ecosia and Quant all use the same underlying Bing (Microsoft) data.
- lalame 7y agoStartpage isn't an actual search engine, it's just a wrapper around Google's results. That's not the case with Qwant, Yandex, or Baidu as far as I know. Also, this: https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-company/ https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-company/
- ferongr 7y agoQuant only exists in order to receive all that sweet, sweet grant money.
- dessant 7y ago> Google has said it uses data to better its services and that users can manage, delete and transfer their data at any time. No, users cannot delete their personal data, unless they have a Google account. Google collects an enormous amount of personal data from people without a Google account, and offers no tools for controlling that data.
- yabadabadoes 7y agoEven with a Google account, a great deal of data like analytics is not associated or partly associated with the Google account. In theory one would have to go to every website and request they report/purge data from analytics, but Google provides no mechanism for websites to comply with such a request.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoI don't think one can request that even in theory. If the data is not personally identifiable, then it is not owned by you (at least in my understanding of gdpr and similar privacy regulations). "yabadadoes (or their IP) visited the site" is your data. "someone from yabadabadoes country visited the site" is not your data and it's not up to you to say what the site owner does with that information.
- yabadabadoes 7y agoA user has clientids and/or userids and Google seems to be capable of connecting these back to learn things about users and sites. So what exactly is personally identifiable is a secret.. As I see it Google has fallen into the false position that things they agree not to do based on user settings is the same as not collecting and storing the data necessary to do them. I don't think regulators will see this Google's way.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoIf the analytics records aren't associated with those IDs, and can't be reidentified due to protections like k-anonymity, I don't think it's relevant that Google has other records that are subject to gdpr, and are handled differently.
- jokoon 7y agoI wonder if the GDPR had any effect, but I hope it will change things. Annoying users is better than letting the whole data hoarding keep happening. At least california introduced a bill, too. I'm really curious where all of this will lead to. I wonder how many people are informed that brexit and the trump election were carried by big data. I'm also curious if Obama got help from those big data techniques, I remember he used facebook, but I don't have details.