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Hmmm, what stops Google from doing it anyway? Chrome is the de-facto standard nowadays with every other browser being under 10% market share except Safari holdi

Hmmm, what stops Google from doing it anyway? Chrome is the de-facto standard nowadays with every other browser being under 10% market share except Safari holding out around 20%.

youngtaff 6y ago
Depends what sites you look at - for many consumer sites in the UK Chrome / Safari split on mobile is close to equal and 60%+ of visitors are on mobile Chrome not being available on iOS is good from an anti-monoculture perspective but not so good from a browser feature perspective
- gscott 6y ago
  FireFox just follows in the steps of Chrome now. Whatever Google decides Firefox will just go along with it.
  - youngtaff 6y ago
    As far as consumer usage goes Firefox is effectively dead It's rare that see FF usage above 1% on any of my customers' sites and I think it's only at something like 2% on gov.uk Of course there's a debate to be had over how much FF users blocking analytics affects the numbers but the numbers tie up with the log mining I've done too
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Edge Chrome already surpassed Firefox usage.
    - Semaphor 6y ago
      Germany: FF has 20.4% on Desktop here, and at my work’s website it’s the most used single browser over all platforms (though all Chromium browsers summed up are higher). Caveat: Our website sucks on mobile.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Hence why Firefox fully implemented the privacy disaster known as the AudioContext API, which leaks sensitive information about your audio peripherals without your consent or notification, even on sites with no audio whatsoever. It's abused almost exclusively by ad networks, including Google's DoubleClick on major sites like StackOverflow. These new APIs are used almost entirely for fingerprinting, and this was implemented after the Chrome team claimed they would carefully consider the security ramifications of new APIs. I guess it doesn't matter if the business unit next door prints money as a result.
    - junon 6y ago
      This is the first I've heard of this - why is it being downvoted? I'd like to know more. Do you have any more info about this?
      - 0xy 6y ago
        Sure do. StackOverflow's Google ad partner explicitly allows the abuse of AudioContext and other audio APIs for tracking purposes, ruining user security. [1] These APIs leak sensitive information about your peripherals without your consent or notification [2], and is used rampantly on Google's ad network. Try it yourself and see. Simply open up the browser console and type: (new AudioContext()) Google Chrome developers have claimed that they consider privacy and security while implementing APIs, while they actively tear down privacy and destroy security (which benefits Google's ad unit). The separation between Google Chrome's security team and DoubleClick, is, in my opinion, non-existent. As another example, DoubleClick has a hard-coded backdoor in Chrome that sends a unique browser install ID as telemetry via headers to DoubleClick domains in all requests. [3] [1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/332229/stack-overflow-is-not-trying-to-start-audio https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/332229/stack-overfl... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContext https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContex... [3] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148a1b0ab0080808d8d1b914d02f6057/chrome/browser/metrics/variations/variations_http_header_provider.cc https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148...
        6y ago
twobitshifter 6y ago
The article says that it’s already implemented in chrome but is disabled for the time being.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "Hmmm, what stops Google from doing it anyway?" The fear of getting a smackdown for being anti-competitive and too dominant, hopefully, much like the one Microsoft got during IE's dominance a couple of decades ago. Microsoft adopting Chrome's code for its Edge browser is a brilliant bit of jujutsu; not only do they get to join the chorus of voices that say "Google's so powerful and anti-competitive that we had no choice but to adopt their browser engine", they also cut their engineering costs dramatically for their built in browser by having a competitor pay for it.
aasasd 6y ago
Exactly: I can see Chrome implementing a slightly different approach where all sites function as they do now, except anything coming Google which is allowed to do what it wants.
- aasasd 6y ago
  (from Google, of course.)
EMM_386 6y ago
They are doing it anyway. > Google has already implemented both First Party Sets and SameParty cookies in Chrome 89, the current version, where they are included as an "origin trial" to "allow developers to try out new features and give feedback."

Hmmm, what stops Google from doing it anyway? Chrome is the de-facto standard nowadays with every other browser being under 10% market share except Safari holding out around 20%.

youngtaff 6y ago

Depends what sites you look at - for many consumer sites in the UK Chrome / Safari split on mobile is close to equal and 60%+ of visitors are on mobile Chrome not being available on iOS is good from an anti-monoculture perspective but not so good from a browser feature perspective

gscott 6y ago
FireFox just follows in the steps of Chrome now. Whatever Google decides Firefox will just go along with it.
- youngtaff 6y ago
  As far as consumer usage goes Firefox is effectively dead It's rare that see FF usage above 1% on any of my customers' sites and I think it's only at something like 2% on gov.uk Of course there's a debate to be had over how much FF users blocking analytics affects the numbers but the numbers tie up with the log mining I've done too
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Edge Chrome already surpassed Firefox usage.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Germany: FF has 20.4% on Desktop here, and at my work’s website it’s the most used single browser over all platforms (though all Chromium browsers summed up are higher). Caveat: Our website sucks on mobile.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Hence why Firefox fully implemented the privacy disaster known as the AudioContext API, which leaks sensitive information about your audio peripherals without your consent or notification, even on sites with no audio whatsoever. It's abused almost exclusively by ad networks, including Google's DoubleClick on major sites like StackOverflow. These new APIs are used almost entirely for fingerprinting, and this was implemented after the Chrome team claimed they would carefully consider the security ramifications of new APIs. I guess it doesn't matter if the business unit next door prints money as a result.
  - junon 6y ago
    This is the first I've heard of this - why is it being downvoted? I'd like to know more. Do you have any more info about this?
    - 0xy 6y ago
      Sure do. StackOverflow's Google ad partner explicitly allows the abuse of AudioContext and other audio APIs for tracking purposes, ruining user security. [1] These APIs leak sensitive information about your peripherals without your consent or notification [2], and is used rampantly on Google's ad network. Try it yourself and see. Simply open up the browser console and type: (new AudioContext()) Google Chrome developers have claimed that they consider privacy and security while implementing APIs, while they actively tear down privacy and destroy security (which benefits Google's ad unit). The separation between Google Chrome's security team and DoubleClick, is, in my opinion, non-existent. As another example, DoubleClick has a hard-coded backdoor in Chrome that sends a unique browser install ID as telemetry via headers to DoubleClick domains in all requests. [3] [1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/332229/stack-overflow-is-not-trying-to-start-audio https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/332229/stack-overfl... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContext https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AudioContex... [3] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148a1b0ab0080808d8d1b914d02f6057/chrome/browser/metrics/variations/variations_http_header_provider.cc https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e51dcb0c148...
      - 6y ago

twobitshifter 6y ago

The article says that it’s already implemented in chrome but is disabled for the time being.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

> "Hmmm, what stops Google from doing it anyway?" The fear of getting a smackdown for being anti-competitive and too dominant, hopefully, much like the one Microsoft got during IE's dominance a couple of decades ago. Microsoft adopting Chrome's code for its Edge browser is a brilliant bit of jujutsu; not only do they get to join the chorus of voices that say "Google's so powerful and anti-competitive that we had no choice but to adopt their browser engine", they also cut their engineering costs dramatically for their built in browser by having a competitor pay for it.

aasasd 6y ago

Exactly: I can see Chrome implementing a slightly different approach where all sites function as they do now, except anything coming Google which is allowed to do what it wants.

aasasd 6y ago
(from Google, of course.)

EMM_386 6y ago

They are doing it anyway. > Google has already implemented both First Party Sets and SameParty cookies in Chrome 89, the current version, where they are included as an "origin trial" to "allow developers to try out new features and give feedback."