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Ad blockers on Chrome block Google's ads too. The ad script doesn't even run, so it's not getting as far as collecting any data. (I work on ads at Google, spea

• vehemenz 5y ago
  In Chrome and Safari, Google search injects analytics via the ping attribute on <a> tags. This sends some additional ping-to and ping-from headers. So Google is still collecting data from who use its search, provided they are not on Firefox. I would assume it does the same for its other products, such as Google Analytics, but I haven't checked.
  • jefftk 5y ago
    The "ping" attribute is available to all sites and many content blocking extensions (including ad blockers) block these pings. This isn't changing with Manifest V3: extensions will still be able to block them. Note that on Firefox and other browsers that do not support "ping", Google Search still tracks which links you click on, but it uses URL rewriting. There are also extensions that block this.
    • vehemenz 5y ago
      Thanks for the correction. If I were Chrome, I would proxy these requests securely through an innocent-looking API. I hope no one is getting any ideas. It's probably moot anyway. We all know the direction Google/Chrome is going in. Not much we can do at this point.
      • nottorp 5y ago
        > If I were Chrome, I would proxy these requests securely through an innocent-looking API. I hope no one is getting any ideas. Don't they vet all urls you click on for malware? :) There's one of your innocent looking APIs.
• nottorp 5y ago
  I wasn't talking about the ads, but lower level tracking.