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Is there any legitimate reason Chrome doesn't follow suit other than they like ad revenue? An answer from a Googler here would be great. And a real answer, not

Is there any legitimate reason Chrome doesn't follow suit other than they like ad revenue? An answer from a Googler here would be great. And a real answer, not corp-speak. Blocking third party cookies seems like overall a good thing for security. Security is good right? Edit: 2 years is a long time to wait for a security improvement that is literally flipping a switch.

twiceaday 7y ago
January this year Chrome committed to phasing out third party cookies by '22.
- TwoBit 7y ago
  Long enough from now that we'll forget, in case they conclude they can't do it without jeopardizing ad revenue.
msoad 7y ago
Alex Russel and friends love to bash Safari for lack of PWA support but are mute when it comes to things Google does to Chrome that doesn't benefit (or ever harm) the user and only benefit $GOOG.
jefftk 7y ago
I'm a Googler who works in ads, speaking only for myself. If Chrome blocked third party cookies today we'd see something between these two outcomes: a) Publishers lose about half their revenue because ads aren't personalized anymore: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa... b) Advertisers figure out how to keep personalizing ads through fingerprinting (non-cookie tracking) Since (b) is worse than the status quo (users can't reset their fingerprint) I think "a security improvement that is literally flipping a switch" doesn't fit. Chrome's approach (as described in https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path-towards.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...) is: * Block fingerprinting * Figure out how to let advertisers personalize in privacy preserving ways (https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... primarily FLoC and TURTLE-DOV) * Then remove cookies I'm skeptical about the approach, since I think blocking fingerprinting and server-side correlation of requests is very difficult, but I think the people working on this are very good and have thought a lot more about it than I have.
- driverdan 7y ago
  In other words the Chrome team doesn't care about users, it cares about ads. If it put users first, as it should, third party cookies would have been blocked a long time ago and they would be working on blocking other fingerprinting techniques now. This is a great reason to not use Chrome.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Users don't care about ads, but users care about the things that ads fund. If publishers go out of business, users will be worse off. Do you think the browsers should block all ads by default?
    - HugoDaniel 7y ago
      Yes. (i am a user; i don't presume to know what is best for others; speaking as a user that talks to others like me; i don't need to speak about 'users' as a third party entity; i am a significant sample of the set)
      - vntok 7y ago
        Are you ready to pay every website you visit, then? With actual money that you yourself own?
        HugoDaniel 7y ago
        As if ads is the only possible business model on the web. At best the ad revenue is taking money away from other web business models by instituting that kind of mentality that drives people away from donations and paid accounts. Please, consider a paid account/membership when you read the guardian, the intercept, or look for the donation page of quality content articles in wikipedia or any of the loads of blogs written by authors with patreon accounts.
        vntok 7y ago

twiceaday 7y ago

January this year Chrome committed to phasing out third party cookies by '22.

TwoBit 7y ago
Long enough from now that we'll forget, in case they conclude they can't do it without jeopardizing ad revenue.

msoad 7y ago

Alex Russel and friends love to bash Safari for lack of PWA support but are mute when it comes to things Google does to Chrome that doesn't benefit (or ever harm) the user and only benefit $GOOG.

jefftk 7y ago

I'm a Googler who works in ads, speaking only for myself. If Chrome blocked third party cookies today we'd see something between these two outcomes: a) Publishers lose about half their revenue because ads aren't personalized anymore: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa... b) Advertisers figure out how to keep personalizing ads through fingerprinting (non-cookie tracking) Since (b) is worse than the status quo (users can't reset their fingerprint) I think "a security improvement that is literally flipping a switch" doesn't fit. Chrome's approach (as described in https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path-towards.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...) is: * Block fingerprinting * Figure out how to let advertisers personalize in privacy preserving ways (https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... primarily FLoC and TURTLE-DOV) * Then remove cookies I'm skeptical about the approach, since I think blocking fingerprinting and server-side correlation of requests is very difficult, but I think the people working on this are very good and have thought a lot more about it than I have.

driverdan 7y ago
In other words the Chrome team doesn't care about users, it cares about ads. If it put users first, as it should, third party cookies would have been blocked a long time ago and they would be working on blocking other fingerprinting techniques now. This is a great reason to not use Chrome.
- jefftk 7y ago
  Users don't care about ads, but users care about the things that ads fund. If publishers go out of business, users will be worse off. Do you think the browsers should block all ads by default?
  - HugoDaniel 7y ago
    Yes. (i am a user; i don't presume to know what is best for others; speaking as a user that talks to others like me; i don't need to speak about 'users' as a third party entity; i am a significant sample of the set)
    - vntok 7y ago
      Are you ready to pay every website you visit, then? With actual money that you yourself own?
      - HugoDaniel 7y ago
        As if ads is the only possible business model on the web. At best the ad revenue is taking money away from other web business models by instituting that kind of mentality that drives people away from donations and paid accounts. Please, consider a paid account/membership when you read the guardian, the intercept, or look for the donation page of quality content articles in wikipedia or any of the loads of blogs written by authors with patreon accounts.
        vntok 7y ago