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There seems to be a real conflict in interests between Google, effectively a surveillance company, setting new standards for user privacy. It's not the targett

by Lio 6y ago

There seems to be a real conflict in interests between Google, effectively a surveillance company, setting new standards for user privacy. It's not the targetted advertising I object to it's the tracking. I don't want Google to solely access to all my personal data which they then use to provide anonymised information to others. I want to have enough control to stop Google tracking me in the first place rather than anonymising things after the fact. Something like Brave's approach to BATs is what I'd like to see them adopt.

arexxbifs 6y ago
That part is just smoke and mirrors, of course. They don't give a crap about that and "privacy" is becoming yet another marketing buzzword that rarely stands up to scrutiny but is very convenient to hit your opponents over the head with. Google just wants a monopoly on advertising.
- kyrra 6y ago
  Googler opinions are my own. I'd disagree. There is a trend in HN comments to remind people that a company is a collection of people. Google is a collection of people. There are those of us who care deeply about privacy at Google. First: it's interesting talking with googlers or reading their thoughts on how Google does ads and data collection. Many people definitely feel the same way as commenters on HN feel. Lots of people are torn on the fact that ads lets us build lots of other cool products for people. I would say this helps motivate other teams, like cloud, do you find other revenue sources for the company so you don't have to be as dated collection focused. Second: I have seen googlers fight the privacy of users even within my division (payments). Many of us want to do right by our users, and be as privacy focused as we are capable given our constraints. We also know there is a general thought that Google is data collection focused, and one slip up will cause a big drama out on the internet and in the news (Google would likely receive more scrutiny here than some other companies). This helps remind us that we need to treat user data as best we can and minimize what we do collect.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    > There is a trend in HN comments to remind people that a company is a collection of people. Google is a collection of people. There are those of us who care deeply about privacy at Google. It sounds like there is little overlap between Google's employees and the people who make and influence major decisions for Google. Wasn't that recently given as one of the major justifications for unionization?
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    > There is a trend in HN comments to remind people that a company is a collection of people. A company isn't really that, though: a company employs a collection of people to do the work desired by its owners. Since Google is not an employee-owned company, it's not obvious that a group of employees have effective power in this matter.
    - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
      It's the same game theory behind dictatorship. In this case, the dictator can simply be an abstract profit motive, and its lust for blood tomorrow could always overrun today's principled moderation (especially once it begins to starve, which it will since all organizations, no matter how Ozymandian and grand, somehow crumble eventually). The best foundation for good outcomes is to not trust a company and to reject its control to begin with.
  - stiray 6y ago
    I am sorry but this seems like a conflict of interest. Googlers are earning most of their paycheck from spying on people. This is a fact. And everything about google is moving into direction of earning even more - stock owners demand it and based on infinite hunger for more revenue, this is a lost fight. Whatever you do, from within the Alphabet, it is lost game. Now some fraction of those that are not aware of reality might be really fighting for user privacy but your fight is like biting a hand that feeds you. And this is observed as crazy at best. If you want to talk the talk and walk the walk, stop helping them and allow to have public image that they deserve instead of defending them based on some strange minority that is clueless where they work. Or if you want it differently, it is like selling weapons to Central Africa and then saying "Weapons dont kill, people do.". Sure. True. But you are making it more efficient. Now we will probably move to the part "someone else will do it instead". This is the part of having moral and this makes a difference between someone who has it and someone who is searching for apologies.
nwellnhof 6y ago
> I want to have enough control to stop Google tracking me in the first place rather than anonymising things after the fact. Google's proposals actually anonymize data before being sent to Google or any other ad network. But this only works by moving parts of the ad infrastructure into your browser. Do you really want your browser run machine learning algorithms to assign you to a cohort (see FLoC), or have ad auctions take place on your device (see TURTLE-DOV)?
- hp77 6y ago
  for anyone looking to read more on FLoC -> https://github.com/WICG/floc https://github.com/WICG/floc and TURTLE-DOV -> https://github.com/WICG/turtledove https://github.com/WICG/turtledove Thanks OP for mentioning these.
  - nickhalfasleep 6y ago
    Absolutely nothing about fraud in these. Interesting, considering who or what would validate that these actions are occurring in front of an actual user.
    - jefftk 6y ago
      See https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ (Disclosure: I work on ads a Google, speaking only for myself)
      - jka 6y ago
        Thanks for the link, and also thanks to the ancestor commentors for sharing more information. Although I understand that the revenue and reality of marketing revenue is vast and in some ways unstoppable, this is quite a bit of complex and challenging engineering work which creates more surface area in browsers in return for privacy. It's probably worth it on the whole, as long as it's done carefully, but for someone who cares a bit about simplicity, efficiency and being able to comprehend what's happening: will there be an opportunity just to disable targeting advertising (and thus the code paths and logic associated with it all)? (I'll try to reason about this and work it out myself from the documentation; I do already see that there's a "Disable Ad Interest Groups", but I don't know if that's quite it, yet)
ricardo81 6y ago
The last CMA report[0] concluded[1] that Google's dominant position in search and advertising was partly due to how their extensive tracking enables them to get a higher ROI per user, allowing them to outbid potential competitors for things such as becoming the default search engine on Apple devices, further reinforcing their dominant position. I agree with you, if I type in a search term from location X, advertisers have enough targeting to serve me a relevant ad which I'm totally fine with. [0] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-platforms-and-digital-advertising-market-study https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-platforms-and-digital-ad... [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-lifts-the-lid-on-digital-giants https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-lifts-the-lid-on-digi...
- tgragnato 6y ago
  > which I'm totally fine with If there's an investigation it's because governments are starting to realise they are not totally fine with it. You may be, but it's off topic. The topic is the UK. Abuse of market position, free markets, monopolies, oligopolies, pools, trusts. Impoverishment of one nation's economy in favor of another, tax evasion, unfair business practices. Individuals don't care about these things, but governments do.
  - dan-robertson 6y ago
    Seeing your list, it does seem like things the government of the U.K. cares about but it’s debatable whether they want more or less of these things.
- Xelbair 6y ago
  >I agree with you, if I type in a search term from location X, advertisers have enough targeting to serve me a relevant ad which I'm totally fine with. i am not fine with that, because that's just a step from sellers offering a personalized prices for me, trying to squeeze everything out of me.
  - ricardo81 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean. I was meaning to differentiate between a vanilla search vs tracking data augmenting the search/ad delivery process. Obviously the search term itself is used, and often location is required for queries such as "taxis near me". It's also essential for advertisers to know if you're in their geographical market. That's just my opinion on what kind of data is OK to share, the point was that no further information is generally needed. The CMA reports highlight the fact that insidious tracking and the subsequent ROI tends to cement the dominant position of those who use it.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> There seems to be a real conflict in interests between Google, effectively a surveillance company, setting new standards for user privacy. Related to this: Google has a lot of influence regarding web standards.
chrischapman 6y ago
Hidden measures are the essence of surveillance capitalism. What's needed is personal choice and transparency. And yes, I agree. I want to be in control of my consent too. The thing I think we're missing is the informed in informed consent that legislation requires. These measures just help to keep us in the dark.
Sandra56 6y ago
zxczxczxcxzc
Sandra56 6y ago
I get paid over $87 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what I've been doing,..............__Www.Workapp2.Com
m463 6y ago
I think the real conflict of interest is when other services are layered on top of google. For instance, you cannot make an appointment with the California DMV without using google services. Just accessing the website will try to log you into google.

by Lio 6y ago

arexxbifs 6y ago

That part is just smoke and mirrors, of course. They don't give a crap about that and "privacy" is becoming yet another marketing buzzword that rarely stands up to scrutiny but is very convenient to hit your opponents over the head with. Google just wants a monopoly on advertising.

kyrra 6y ago
Googler opinions are my own. I'd disagree. There is a trend in HN comments to remind people that a company is a collection of people. Google is a collection of people. There are those of us who care deeply about privacy at Google. First: it's interesting talking with googlers or reading their thoughts on how Google does ads and data collection. Many people definitely feel the same way as commenters on HN feel. Lots of people are torn on the fact that ads lets us build lots of other cool products for people. I would say this helps motivate other teams, like cloud, do you find other revenue sources for the company so you don't have to be as dated collection focused. Second: I have seen googlers fight the privacy of users even within my division (payments). Many of us want to do right by our users, and be as privacy focused as we are capable given our constraints. We also know there is a general thought that Google is data collection focused, and one slip up will cause a big drama out on the internet and in the news (Google would likely receive more scrutiny here than some other companies). This helps remind us that we need to treat user data as best we can and minimize what we do collect.
- CivBase 6y ago
  > There is a trend in HN comments to remind people that a company is a collection of people. Google is a collection of people. There are those of us who care deeply about privacy at Google. It sounds like there is little overlap between Google's employees and the people who make and influence major decisions for Google. Wasn't that recently given as one of the major justifications for unionization?
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  > There is a trend in HN comments to remind people that a company is a collection of people. A company isn't really that, though: a company employs a collection of people to do the work desired by its owners. Since Google is not an employee-owned company, it's not obvious that a group of employees have effective power in this matter.
  - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
    It's the same game theory behind dictatorship. In this case, the dictator can simply be an abstract profit motive, and its lust for blood tomorrow could always overrun today's principled moderation (especially once it begins to starve, which it will since all organizations, no matter how Ozymandian and grand, somehow crumble eventually). The best foundation for good outcomes is to not trust a company and to reject its control to begin with.
- stiray 6y ago
  I am sorry but this seems like a conflict of interest. Googlers are earning most of their paycheck from spying on people. This is a fact. And everything about google is moving into direction of earning even more - stock owners demand it and based on infinite hunger for more revenue, this is a lost fight. Whatever you do, from within the Alphabet, it is lost game. Now some fraction of those that are not aware of reality might be really fighting for user privacy but your fight is like biting a hand that feeds you. And this is observed as crazy at best. If you want to talk the talk and walk the walk, stop helping them and allow to have public image that they deserve instead of defending them based on some strange minority that is clueless where they work. Or if you want it differently, it is like selling weapons to Central Africa and then saying "Weapons dont kill, people do.". Sure. True. But you are making it more efficient. Now we will probably move to the part "someone else will do it instead". This is the part of having moral and this makes a difference between someone who has it and someone who is searching for apologies.

nwellnhof 6y ago

> I want to have enough control to stop Google tracking me in the first place rather than anonymising things after the fact. Google's proposals actually anonymize data before being sent to Google or any other ad network. But this only works by moving parts of the ad infrastructure into your browser. Do you really want your browser run machine learning algorithms to assign you to a cohort (see FLoC), or have ad auctions take place on your device (see TURTLE-DOV)?

hp77 6y ago
for anyone looking to read more on FLoC -> https://github.com/WICG/floc https://github.com/WICG/floc and TURTLE-DOV -> https://github.com/WICG/turtledove https://github.com/WICG/turtledove Thanks OP for mentioning these.
- nickhalfasleep 6y ago
  Absolutely nothing about fraud in these. Interesting, considering who or what would validate that these actions are occurring in front of an actual user.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    See https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ https://web.dev/trust-tokens/ (Disclosure: I work on ads a Google, speaking only for myself)
    - jka 6y ago
      Thanks for the link, and also thanks to the ancestor commentors for sharing more information. Although I understand that the revenue and reality of marketing revenue is vast and in some ways unstoppable, this is quite a bit of complex and challenging engineering work which creates more surface area in browsers in return for privacy. It's probably worth it on the whole, as long as it's done carefully, but for someone who cares a bit about simplicity, efficiency and being able to comprehend what's happening: will there be an opportunity just to disable targeting advertising (and thus the code paths and logic associated with it all)? (I'll try to reason about this and work it out myself from the documentation; I do already see that there's a "Disable Ad Interest Groups", but I don't know if that's quite it, yet)

ricardo81 6y ago

The last CMA report[0] concluded[1] that Google's dominant position in search and advertising was partly due to how their extensive tracking enables them to get a higher ROI per user, allowing them to outbid potential competitors for things such as becoming the default search engine on Apple devices, further reinforcing their dominant position. I agree with you, if I type in a search term from location X, advertisers have enough targeting to serve me a relevant ad which I'm totally fine with. [0] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-platforms-and-digital-advertising-market-study https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-platforms-and-digital-ad... [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-lifts-the-lid-on-digital-giants https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-lifts-the-lid-on-digi...

tgragnato 6y ago
> which I'm totally fine with If there's an investigation it's because governments are starting to realise they are not totally fine with it. You may be, but it's off topic. The topic is the UK. Abuse of market position, free markets, monopolies, oligopolies, pools, trusts. Impoverishment of one nation's economy in favor of another, tax evasion, unfair business practices. Individuals don't care about these things, but governments do.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  Seeing your list, it does seem like things the government of the U.K. cares about but it’s debatable whether they want more or less of these things.
Xelbair 6y ago
>I agree with you, if I type in a search term from location X, advertisers have enough targeting to serve me a relevant ad which I'm totally fine with. i am not fine with that, because that's just a step from sellers offering a personalized prices for me, trying to squeeze everything out of me.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean. I was meaning to differentiate between a vanilla search vs tracking data augmenting the search/ad delivery process. Obviously the search term itself is used, and often location is required for queries such as "taxis near me". It's also essential for advertisers to know if you're in their geographical market. That's just my opinion on what kind of data is OK to share, the point was that no further information is generally needed. The CMA reports highlight the fact that insidious tracking and the subsequent ROI tends to cement the dominant position of those who use it.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

> There seems to be a real conflict in interests between Google, effectively a surveillance company, setting new standards for user privacy. Related to this: Google has a lot of influence regarding web standards.

chrischapman 6y ago

Hidden measures are the essence of surveillance capitalism. What's needed is personal choice and transparency. And yes, I agree. I want to be in control of my consent too. The thing I think we're missing is the informed in informed consent that legislation requires. These measures just help to keep us in the dark.

Sandra56 6y ago

zxczxczxcxzc

Sandra56 6y ago

I get paid over $87 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what I've been doing,..............__Www.Workapp2.Com

m463 6y ago

I think the real conflict of interest is when other services are layered on top of google. For instance, you cannot make an appointment with the California DMV without using google services. Just accessing the website will try to log you into google.