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I'm happy that HN has accepted a change in the article's title, which appears as "Google says it may have found a privacy-friendly substitute to cookies." This

I'm happy that HN has accepted a change in the article's title, which appears as "Google says it may have found a privacy-friendly substitute to cookies." This terminology -- "found" -- has been used by Google and others to imply that their capture of behavioral "exhaust" is somehow a natural phenomenon, rather than a conscious, deliberate, profit-driven choice. Google didn't "find" a substitute. They are developing it because they are getting pushback from users and companies who object to their tracking methods and they're desperate to find something that convinces users they've Really Changed This Time. Don't fall for it. Break up with Google. They are abusive.

local_dev 6y ago
Agreed. When I saw this title and read the article, the first thing I thought was "Ok, how to I block this/opt-out". It sounds like this is only in Chrome though, for now. One hopes that FF will continue to be privacy focused and not add anything like this.
bmcahren 6y ago
If you read into the federated technology they've been deploying I'm fairly comfortable saying I agree with their decisions. Let's take a look at the "Now Playing" architecture available on Pixel devices. At first glance by a critic you think "You're crazy for giving Google permission to have your microphone always on and listening for songs you're hearing, privacy this privacy that". If you read into it, you'll be comforted to know they've built a model to generate signatures clientside which are able to be compared on-device to a list of signatures which are similar to it. Then as far as I understand, they are able to take signatures which contain no discernable audio data and use those to discover new audio trends. > On Pixel 4 and later phones, the counts of songs recognized are aggregated using a privacy-preserving technology called federated analytics. This will be used to improve Now Playing's song database so it will recognize what’s playing more often. Google can never see what songs you listen to, just the most popular songs in different regions. Privacy-preserving, user-beneficial, and useful for advertising targeting if you haven't opted out of interest based ads.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  As far as "now playing",what they say the software does may be quite clever in privacy preserving ways. But once you have given them access to your microphone, you have to trust that their software does what they say it does, without mistakes or bugs (whether in design or implementation) or accidental security vulnerabilities (possibly maliciously introduced by the NSA or who knows). If you do not give them access to your microphone (assuming the OS access controls are themselves working; but that's a much smaller attack area), you do not need to understand trust anything.
  - pseudosavant 6y ago
    And this is from a company that forgot to tell people that the flashy smart thermostat they bought last year has had a mic in it the whole time. They are a company that will only pay attention to privacy when forced to by an existential threat. It just isn't in their company DNA to care about user privacy. They aren't the customers.
    - hertzrat 6y ago
      What do you mean a microphone in a thermostat? You mean nest?
      - deadmutex 6y ago
        I know Ecobee Thermostat has a mic built in... but not Nest Thermostat. So, OP is likely mistaken in their comment.
    - deadmutex 6y ago
      > that the flashy smart thermostat they bought last year has had a mic in it the whole time. Note to readers: This is false. EDIT: If you're downvoting, please provide evidence. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and OPs post increases it. EDIT #2: Here is Rishi Chandra, GM of Nest: "Putting a microphone on a thermostat, I actually don't think makes any sense"
crazygringo 6y ago
I'm very attentive to wording but I think you're reading too much into this one. In programming and in business you talking about "finding" a solution to a problem all the time. In this case, the problem is how to improve privacy without advertising revenue dropping off a cliff. And it's not like the solution is staring you in the face -- it takes iteration and testing for it to be "found". So I don't think Google is being disingenuous here. Nothing is being implied as a somehow natural phenomenon. Business in general is about "finding" satisfactory solutions to problems day in and day out. "Find" and "develop" are essentially synonymous and interchangeable here.
- xtiansimon 6y ago
  Haha! Yes to both. Replies!
- chopin24 6y ago
  I'm not comfortable assuming the best intentions from a $1.2T company whose business model relies on tracking my behavior. They burned that bridge after the war-driving "Wi-Spy" scandal, which went on from 2007-2010. [0]. It's clear that Google sees a threat to their business model, and they'll use any PR-friendly language they can to convince people that they're addressing the user concerns. Just like they did in 2010, when they ascribed their willful malfeasance to a "rogue engineer" who they then put in charge of StreetView. If I'm "reading too much into it" it's because we collectively haven't been reading enough into it for the past 15 or so years, and in that time our Overton window has shifted too far. [0]https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/23/google_wispy_payout/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/23/google_wispy_payout/
  - buttersbrian 6y ago
    You, myself, everyone -- we're jaded. Got it. Not much concerned with descriptions, so what's your prescription: What do you believe to be satisfactory wording in this case?
  - spinningslate 6y ago
    this. I'm fine with GP's use of "finding" a solution. Yes, they found one; finding solutions is a central process in software. But I'm absolutely not fine with the wording. When confronted with the phrase "Google says it may have found a privacy-friendly substitute to cookies", I'd wager most people would think "this improves my privacy in a general way". It doesn't. What it actually means is: Google will make it more difficult for others to track you, but Google will remain committed to tracking everything about you that it possibly can. Except silently, and without your ability to opt out using ad blockers etc. Net result: even less control over your privacy, and Google further entrenches its monopoly to boot. That's not an improvement in privacy.
suddenexample 6y ago
Company: Supports measures that lead to additional privacy because they realize how important it is to their users HN: Don't be tricked, Google is evil. Like I understand WHY there's a hate boner for Google. I just don't understand why people think it's bad for them to acknowledge the preferences of their users and make decisions accordingly.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Because the preferences of their users would be to stop tracking their users. You don't need a replacement, you just need to get rid of it. There's a significant amount of gaslighting to claiming that you value user privacy whilst developing new ways to track users.
  - buttersbrian 6y ago
    Are you sure? I think there's lots of consumers that find the tradeoff okay - in fact I hear people state as much all the time. Maybe they don't know the extent of the tracking, or they don't care, but the opinion exists and it's not negligible. If companies could anonymously track users, and still maintain the marketing backbone of the internet I think most people would be fine with it -- in fact, prefer it.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      Would they prefer it enough to opt into that tracking and targeting? If users had to go to a setting to turn on targeted ads, what percentage of them do you think would do it? I suspect it would be pretty low. I wonder if most people would even notice that the setting had been turned off? We use the opt out model all the time to justify why users don't actually care about tracking -- we say that they'd opt out if they did care. But I feel like we all mostly know that an opt in system would also not see much use (that's the reason why ad networks are so opposed to them), and I don't know why we don't consider that to be evidence that consumers probably don't value targeted ads very much at all.
      - 6y ago
frogpelt 6y ago
You said "they are desperate to find something". They said they "found" something. I see similarities.
Justsignedup 6y ago
This is a great point. What is "found"? Like the point is "I don't want 3rd party websites to be AT ALL AWARE that I visited another site". How can you find an alternative? I don't want an alternative, I want it gone. If google does this, and other browsers don't, it would mean that just using another browser like Firefox will effectively hide you. Hoping for that.

local_dev 6y ago

Agreed. When I saw this title and read the article, the first thing I thought was "Ok, how to I block this/opt-out". It sounds like this is only in Chrome though, for now. One hopes that FF will continue to be privacy focused and not add anything like this.

bmcahren 6y ago

If you read into the federated technology they've been deploying I'm fairly comfortable saying I agree with their decisions. Let's take a look at the "Now Playing" architecture available on Pixel devices. At first glance by a critic you think "You're crazy for giving Google permission to have your microphone always on and listening for songs you're hearing, privacy this privacy that". If you read into it, you'll be comforted to know they've built a model to generate signatures clientside which are able to be compared on-device to a list of signatures which are similar to it. Then as far as I understand, they are able to take signatures which contain no discernable audio data and use those to discover new audio trends. > On Pixel 4 and later phones, the counts of songs recognized are aggregated using a privacy-preserving technology called federated analytics. This will be used to improve Now Playing's song database so it will recognize what’s playing more often. Google can never see what songs you listen to, just the most popular songs in different regions. Privacy-preserving, user-beneficial, and useful for advertising targeting if you haven't opted out of interest based ads.

jrochkind1 6y ago
As far as "now playing",what they say the software does may be quite clever in privacy preserving ways. But once you have given them access to your microphone, you have to trust that their software does what they say it does, without mistakes or bugs (whether in design or implementation) or accidental security vulnerabilities (possibly maliciously introduced by the NSA or who knows). If you do not give them access to your microphone (assuming the OS access controls are themselves working; but that's a much smaller attack area), you do not need to understand trust anything.
- pseudosavant 6y ago
  And this is from a company that forgot to tell people that the flashy smart thermostat they bought last year has had a mic in it the whole time. They are a company that will only pay attention to privacy when forced to by an existential threat. It just isn't in their company DNA to care about user privacy. They aren't the customers.
  - hertzrat 6y ago
    What do you mean a microphone in a thermostat? You mean nest?
    - deadmutex 6y ago
      I know Ecobee Thermostat has a mic built in... but not Nest Thermostat. So, OP is likely mistaken in their comment.
  - deadmutex 6y ago
    > that the flashy smart thermostat they bought last year has had a mic in it the whole time. Note to readers: This is false. EDIT: If you're downvoting, please provide evidence. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and OPs post increases it. EDIT #2: Here is Rishi Chandra, GM of Nest: "Putting a microphone on a thermostat, I actually don't think makes any sense"

crazygringo 6y ago

I'm very attentive to wording but I think you're reading too much into this one. In programming and in business you talking about "finding" a solution to a problem all the time. In this case, the problem is how to improve privacy without advertising revenue dropping off a cliff. And it's not like the solution is staring you in the face -- it takes iteration and testing for it to be "found". So I don't think Google is being disingenuous here. Nothing is being implied as a somehow natural phenomenon. Business in general is about "finding" satisfactory solutions to problems day in and day out. "Find" and "develop" are essentially synonymous and interchangeable here.

xtiansimon 6y ago
Haha! Yes to both. Replies!
chopin24 6y ago
I'm not comfortable assuming the best intentions from a $1.2T company whose business model relies on tracking my behavior. They burned that bridge after the war-driving "Wi-Spy" scandal, which went on from 2007-2010. [0]. It's clear that Google sees a threat to their business model, and they'll use any PR-friendly language they can to convince people that they're addressing the user concerns. Just like they did in 2010, when they ascribed their willful malfeasance to a "rogue engineer" who they then put in charge of StreetView. If I'm "reading too much into it" it's because we collectively haven't been reading enough into it for the past 15 or so years, and in that time our Overton window has shifted too far. [0]https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/23/google_wispy_payout/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/23/google_wispy_payout/
- buttersbrian 6y ago
  You, myself, everyone -- we're jaded. Got it. Not much concerned with descriptions, so what's your prescription: What do you believe to be satisfactory wording in this case?
- spinningslate 6y ago
  this. I'm fine with GP's use of "finding" a solution. Yes, they found one; finding solutions is a central process in software. But I'm absolutely not fine with the wording. When confronted with the phrase "Google says it may have found a privacy-friendly substitute to cookies", I'd wager most people would think "this improves my privacy in a general way". It doesn't. What it actually means is: Google will make it more difficult for others to track you, but Google will remain committed to tracking everything about you that it possibly can. Except silently, and without your ability to opt out using ad blockers etc. Net result: even less control over your privacy, and Google further entrenches its monopoly to boot. That's not an improvement in privacy.

suddenexample 6y ago

Company: Supports measures that lead to additional privacy because they realize how important it is to their users HN: Don't be tricked, Google is evil. Like I understand WHY there's a hate boner for Google. I just don't understand why people think it's bad for them to acknowledge the preferences of their users and make decisions accordingly.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Because the preferences of their users would be to stop tracking their users. You don't need a replacement, you just need to get rid of it. There's a significant amount of gaslighting to claiming that you value user privacy whilst developing new ways to track users.
- buttersbrian 6y ago
  Are you sure? I think there's lots of consumers that find the tradeoff okay - in fact I hear people state as much all the time. Maybe they don't know the extent of the tracking, or they don't care, but the opinion exists and it's not negligible. If companies could anonymously track users, and still maintain the marketing backbone of the internet I think most people would be fine with it -- in fact, prefer it.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    Would they prefer it enough to opt into that tracking and targeting? If users had to go to a setting to turn on targeted ads, what percentage of them do you think would do it? I suspect it would be pretty low. I wonder if most people would even notice that the setting had been turned off? We use the opt out model all the time to justify why users don't actually care about tracking -- we say that they'd opt out if they did care. But I feel like we all mostly know that an opt in system would also not see much use (that's the reason why ad networks are so opposed to them), and I don't know why we don't consider that to be evidence that consumers probably don't value targeted ads very much at all.
    - 6y ago

frogpelt 6y ago

You said "they are desperate to find something". They said they "found" something. I see similarities.

Justsignedup 6y ago

This is a great point. What is "found"? Like the point is "I don't want 3rd party websites to be AT ALL AWARE that I visited another site". How can you find an alternative? I don't want an alternative, I want it gone. If google does this, and other browsers don't, it would mean that just using another browser like Firefox will effectively hide you. Hoping for that.