56 ms·

Chrome now tracks users and shares a “topic” list with advertisers

974 points by edvinbesic 3y ago

Gud 3y ago
Why do people still use Chrome? I can kind of understand Google search, Gmail and Maps(though search kind of sucks nowadays), but chrome is turning into one of the most user hostile pieces of software.
- mcv 3y ago
  And there are perfectly fine alternatives that do not sacrifice features or convenience in the slightest. I don't see a legitimate use case for Chrome.
tikimcfee 3y ago
Just… just stop using google. Stop. Stop excusing it. “It’s work. It’s my hobby. I like it. But I can make it work.” Just stop. It’s only hard because you think you’re in this world technology that’s more important than you as a human. Uninstall chrome. Tell others to do it. Tell others why. Tell others the lies, deceit, marginalization, and corruption. And then don’t participate.
turtleyacht 3y ago
Wonder if there is a "Gentoo for browsers," where you specify certain parts of the stack: layout engine, HTTP engine (cURL), JS engine (V8, none) and conveniences (password management, bookmarks), and the script builds it for you. The conceit is the ability to view responses as nodes in a graph, and laying filters on top. The tradeoff for performance being introspection and control.
clouddrover 3y ago
The solution is simple: use Firefox.
joobus 3y ago
I wonder how Brave and Microsoft Edge will handle this change. Are they also going to ship this "feature"?
- dylan604 3y ago
  Everything I'm seeing is that it is Chrome doing this, not Chromium. If the Googs decides to add features on top of Chromium in its Chrome release, that does not mean that other Chromium based browsers will have those changes automatically as well. It totally makes sense to me that Googs would not want these in the base Chromium as it's the secret sauce just for the Googs
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - joobus 3y ago
    I would think Google would want this in Brave and Edge also. Google will want to advertise to the users of these browsers even though they aren't using Chrome.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Then why are the articles not saying Chromium and specifying Chrome? Has Chrome become the new Kleenex/Xerox/Rollerblade?
      - midoridensha 3y ago
        Most people reading articles have no idea what Chromium is and how it differs from Chrome.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    The code for it is included with Chromium. Responsibly phasing out 3rd party cookies is important for the whole ecosystem. https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:components/browsing_topics/ https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:com...
fh9302 3y ago
It's nefarious how they ask you if you want to turn on "ad privacy", indicating that this feature increases your privacy when in reality it does the opposite.
- afavour 3y ago
  Technically they’re correct: the privacy offered by this new system is superior to that which is offered by the web with no tracking protection. Thinking about it in a very abstract way I find the whole thing fascinating. Google is clearly terrified that the tracking protection offered by other browsers is going to become the norm and they’re trying to head that off at the pass by implementing this compromise. But I’m not sure why they’re all that worried about it, they still have the lions share or the browser market. Maybe they’re worried about incoming legislation?
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
    It’s beautiful, from a sociopath’s perspective, if you think about it. “If you let me punch your teeth out, the stabbings will stop (sometime in the future, terms and conditions may apply)” All while refusing to acknowledge that there is an option that requires neither punching nor stabbing. To an uninformed user that takes Google’s words at face value it sounds like an upgrade.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    If I'm understanding correctly, they're not turning on some other tracking prevention when you enable this "feature". It's strictly a privacy downgrade.
    - Scion9066 3y ago
      Not yet but they can't just turn off third party cookies arbitrarily in their browser without giving time for sites and advertisers to update their systems to account for the removal. They're already facing anticompetitive/monopoly scrutiny on many other fronts, they don't need to shoot themselves in the foot in the advertising space as well. Thus the first step is to implement a replacement technology first and then make the change.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Time to uninstall chrome! I keep it around just incase but nah.
- Calamitous 3y ago
  Out of curiousity, what do you use instead?
  - bigyikes 3y ago
    Not the OP, but I use Safari on my personal devices, or Firefox if I have to use Windows. The efficiency of Safari is unbeatable, and I prefer its UX. I also use Kagi instead of Google search.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      Same (except the search)
  - sdm 3y ago
    Firefox -- faster, better feature like container tabs, more secure and more private
  - hobobaggins 3y ago
    Brave, Firefox, or Vivaldi.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  For almost all the times when you really need Chrome because Firefox doesn't work, Chromium will work just fine. You probably don't need Chrome.
jsnell 3y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401909
timw4mail 3y ago
And how is Chrome not the new Internet Explorer?
- dylan604 3y ago
  Because the new Internet Explorer is Chrome-wannabe
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  Because Firefox exists. And anyone can use Chromium to compete with Chrome fairly rapidly. It’s not the new IE. In my mind it’s worse than the new IE because it achieves similar goals as the IE abuse but without necessarily doing anything illegal.
  - netdoll 3y ago
    Mozilla and Opera existed at the time, as well as a bountiful amount of IE shells which essentially acted as the Chromium derivative equivalents. Outside of Chrome (technically) shipping the same binaries across all the platforms it supports, and using scope creep in a more subtle way compared to 90s-era IE, I don't see how the situation is materially different between now and then.
    - rhaway84773 3y ago
      This is not exactly right. Netscape Navigator was the original browser. Microsoft invested a lot of money to bring IE up to par and exceed Netscape’s capabilities. And once they wiped out Netscape they coasted and used IE as a Trojan horse to control the web. It was after IE6’s stagnation that Firefox was spun out of Netscape and took some time to compete. Firefox was first released in 2004 and IE6 in 2001. Opera which had been around was proprietary. To the extent they were interested in making the internet a better place it was only to serve their company interests. Thars very different from the situation we have now where Firefox is well known and open source, and even Chromium’s open source so it can be leveraged by better stewards of the internet. Don’t get me wrong. My argument is not that Google is better than Microsoft. My argument is simply that the situation we’re facing right now is very different from the IE era. If anything, I’m arguing that the Chrome era is worse because of how much more insidious Google’s actions are. It was easy for the EU to essentially eliminate the IE threat by forcing MS to unbundle IE and for Firefox (and later chrome) to replace IE purely on the basis of providing a better software. Replacing Chrome on the other hand is a very different kind of problem that is possibly much harder.
arpowers 3y ago
My friend Jake runs an analytics company. He's faced enormous challenges due to Google's "privacy" policies... Google is removing nearly all access to user data, they don't even like you looking at the user agent string (which issues a warning)... not to mention its impossible to know about search traffic and even referring urls. Meanwhile Google has access to all this data, so he tells me all this is just gaslighting so they can illicitly protect their monopoly on web data.
- sensanaty 3y ago
  No offence, but your friend Jake can go fuck himself. I have very little trust for Google and other megacorps like it, but I have even less trust for parasitic entities like Jake that just piggyback on top of Google's already horrid practices to extract wealth from, so you'll find no sympathy for Jake from me.
- afavour 3y ago
  > Meanwhile Google has access to all this data I’m loathe the defend Google but I don’t think this is the case. The replacement for user agent sniffing (client hints? I forget) is a universal thing and I don’t think Google has a secret back door tracking mechanism their ad network is able to use. It would certainly be a big story if they did.
  - rhaway84773 3y ago
    Google’s ad network might not have access. But does Google have access? Because there are many ways Google can leverage this data without giving their ad network access. Privacy isn’t just about privacy from ads. There are all sorts of non ad related privacy abuses that can exist.
    - foobarian 3y ago
      A while ago now I booked a room on Expedia, which ended in me getting a confirmation email with an itinerary to my Gmail backed address. Lo and behold, few minutes later a CTA pops up on my Android phone offering to create a matching trip in Google's trip planning product. I'm sure it's all above board once you got into the fine print but it was not a pleasant experience.
bigyikes 3y ago
I heard about this the other day and didn’t think much of it. I got the actual update today on my work laptop and… just wow. How did the folks at Google ship this with a straight face? The changeboarding modal basically lies to your face. I’ve always felt a little weird about Google’s tracking, but this takes it to another level. Creepy as heck.
- arendtio 3y ago
  When I saw that dialog, I didn't know which button to click. I knew I didn't want to share the topics I am interested in or have personalized / more relevant ads of any kind, but the text was so confusion and mixing so many things (like activate the privacy feature when in fact you are activating the tracking feature). In the end, I reverted to clicking the non-primary button (which you are not supposed to click) and checked in the settings everything was in order.
- choppaface 3y ago
  I’m thoroughly impressed how HN also buried this story so quickly; usually something so dramatic would stick on the front page for days. Speaks a lot about Google-biases in the content moderation of HN.
- wbl 3y ago
  Because they don't get to kill third party cookies without shipping it.
  - hirsin 3y ago
    Context? That whole project was kind of a cluster when I was involved with it, how does this help? Or is it more, without a replacement for 3p cookie tracking they couldn't break it (useful uses of 3p cookies be damned)?
    - jsnell 3y ago
      Regulators in the US, EU and UK have made it clear that Chrome can't remove support for 3p cookies without building a replacement feature that works for non-Google ad networks.
javajosh 3y ago
I use Chrome in development on a Windows box. Here is my experience with this upgrade: 1. Upgraded manually from 116.0.5845.179 to 116.0.5845.180 through About dialog. 2. Restart. No notification that anything has changed. 3. Go to settings, privacy and security, privacy guide, and on the 4th page (only 3 pips!) Or go to settings, privacy and security, Ad privacy (the new element) 4. The privacy guide blurb: Privacy Sandbox trial Chrome is exploring new features that allow sites to deliver the same browsing experience using less of your data Under Ad privacy: 5. Ad topics: Site-suggested ads. Based on your activity on a site. This setting is on. 6. Site-suggested ads. Based on your activity on a site. This setting is on. 7. Ad measurement. Sites and advertisers can understand how ads perform. This setting is on. This roll out is filled with dark patterns. At (2) there is no notification that anything has changed. If not for this article, I would not have known about this at all. At (3) the feature seems intentionally hidden. At (4) the description of these features misleads the user that the purpose is to "use less of their data". This is false, or at least badly misleading. At (5,6,7) they've defaulted all new "features" to "on". This is all so shady, and very un-Google like. I have such high regard for the Chrome team: was there push back on this? Do they realize what a bad look this is?
- dylan604 3y ago
  > Do they realize what a bad look this is? Let's say that they do realize it. The 0.x% of users that are aware of, understand, and will do anything other than just blindly continuing to use the software is an acceptable number of lost users. In other words, everyone reading HN could stop using Chrome right now, and Googs would not notice the blip
- bhaney 3y ago
  > This is all so shady, and very un-Google like Where have you been the last several years?
  - javajosh 3y ago
    I was expecting this response, and let me say: it fills me with distaste. You cut off any possibility of improvement, on their part, because no matter what they do, you won't accept it. It is the opposite of constructive criticism: it is an ideological stance.
charcircuit 3y ago
>this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask This is factually incorrect. It works like third party cookies, but with privacy. A web page can only retrieve a topic if that site has already observe you visit pages of that topic. In order for you to observe a site that site must send a fetch request to you or embed you in an iframe. If a random site calls document.browsingTopics() they get no topics as not enough data has been observed by them.
- deleted 3y ago
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chatmasta 3y ago
Disable it here: chrome://settings/adPrivacy (for now)
- _moof 3y ago
  You can also disable it by going here: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Wow, Chrome has become Facebook ... having to drill in and find/disable newly added opt-out features.
sharts 3y ago
People hate on Google yet...continue to use their services and want to work there. Therefore, people do not disapprove.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  Perhaps those are mutually-exclusive groups of people.
MBCook 3y ago
“I want real Chrome on iOS. Safari sucks! It’s the new IE 6! Chrome is moving the web forward!” Yeah. Things are going great in Chrome world. Totally should give them dominance over the one sliver they don’t control. (I have no problem with letting people have FF/etc. but let’s face it, it will be 90%+ Chrome within days)
SquareWheel 3y ago
> Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," Ars seems to be confusing the topics API with the privacy sandbox as a whole. Most features are early, like client hints, while others like privacy budget haven't even been released yet. https://privacysandbox.com/open-web/#proposals-for-the-web https://privacysandbox.com/open-web/#proposals-for-the-web
- ericpauley 3y ago
  The whole article is a mess of confusion. FLoC and Topics have nothing in common functionally, aside from being useful for ad targeting.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    IIRC the failure of the first lead to the second. And if Steve Gibson is to be believed Topics is not only an improvement, it's an unqualified good. (I'm not yet convinced though if Google didn't have so many other harvesting avenues I'd see it as better for privacy too.)
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      > Topics is not only an improvement, it's an unqualified good. It's still sending interest information to advertisers, so it's an unqualified negative. Stop sending information to advertisers. Kill third-party cookies, and anything purporting to replace them.
darrmit 3y ago
As much as I hate what Google has done with Chrome and I choose not to use it, the comparisons to the IE6-8 dominance are even more acute when you consider that Chrome is also successful in the enterprise due to its support for both typical group policy/Mobile Device Management configuration as well as its integration into Google Workspace. Edit: I had initially said “dominant” in the enterprise, but I imagine that title still goes to Edge? It would be impressive if it wasn’t so depressing and gross.
savingsPossible 3y ago
In what sense did google 'get its way'? Was there some legal attempt to stop them that they somehow defeated?
ericpauley 3y ago
Our research group does work in this space[1], so I’ll claim some familiarity. This article has multiple problems: 1. Privacy Sandbox is a project, consisting of many proposals. To pitch it as some cohesive product is misleading. 2. Related: FLoC and Topics are completely separate things, aside from existing under the same project. 3. Topics is reducible to (implementable using) third-party cookies. While the proposal has issues and doesn’t resist tracking as well as Google claims (see below article), Ars’ implication that this is somehow making Chrome less privacy-preserving is patently false. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03825 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03825
- StewardMcOy 3y ago
  I didn't read the Ars article as saying FLoC or Topics make Chrome less privacy-preserving than it was before, but rather that, once Chrome disables third-party cookies, they make Chrome less privacy-preserving than other browsers with third-party cookies disabled. What the author would prefer is that Google also disable third-party cookies and also not ship FLoC or Topics.
  - summerlight 3y ago
    > What the author would prefer is that Google also disable third-party cookies and also not ship FLoC or Topics. That's not an option now thanks to multiple antitrust regulatories. Google actually tried to get rid of 3p cookies to use it as an advantage against competitors as well as privacy friendly PR but this has been blocked. One example from CMA (but not limited to): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62052c52e90e077f7881c975/Google_Sandbox_.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62052c52e90e0...
    - StewardMcOy 3y ago
      Sorry for responding 12 hours later, but I felt I should actually read the ruling here before I replied. It's certainly interesting. The CMA seems to be attempting to balance interests of multiple parties, including both user privacy, healthy competition in the ads space, and the ability for digital publishers to generate revenue from displaying ads. However, most of it appears to focus on the way Google's superior access to information could distort competition. It's not just about cookies. For example. Google could mine synced history data from Chrome. Now, I'm not so naive as to think this would actually happen, but again, the Ars author's solution here could solve that particular problem: If Google ceased all behavior-based advertising in favor of, for example, subject-based advertising, there would be no distortions to competition. Google can't track you, and neither can other advertisers. Everyone has a level playing field. Of course, that would drop revenues for digital publishers and advertising networks, including Google, but it would solve the problems of user privacy and distorted competition. The one thing this ruling makes very clear though, is that it's very difficult to balance these concerns while Google makes a browser. There's a conflict between Google running a behavior-based advertising network and shipping a browser, and these regulatory bodies seem to be bending over backwards to try to find a solution where both of these things can exist. They could most certainly have taken the much easier road of forcing Google to discontinue Chrome.
doublepg23 3y ago
My friend who was the biggest Google evangelist 10yrs ago who went through a round of interviews there (stellar Kotlin programmer) has completely written off the company after this announcement some months ago. He's committed to deGoogling his life now and is even migrating off Gmail this weekend - I think I'll be joining him.
- deleted 3y ago
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- noman-land 3y ago
  As someone who has left, let me try to help. Nextcloud Syncthing Firefox Bitwarden Aegis GrapheneOS F-Droid ntfy NewPipe Signal Matrix Stop using email or do custom domain + some service. Sync locally with Thunderbird or whatever you like.
imgabe 3y ago
Switched to Firefox years ago. Hopefully now more people will.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"Part III. Put Users First; the Rest Will Follow Like most companies, Google has a mission statement or "philosophy." Google's philosophy is divided into 10 points; each point is one sentence long. The first and most interesting is quoted in the title of this part of the book. Unlike most corporate mission statements, this phrase did not come about through long committee discussions: This statement is Larry Page's mantra. Early on, when people asked him about financing his projects, he always replied with something like, "Don't worry about it. If our users are satisfied, if we give them all they want and more, we'll be able to find some money."" https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-google-way/9781593271848/pt03.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-google-way/97815932...
linuxhansl 3y ago
Honestly I never quite understood why most folks switched so easily and unquestioningly to Chrome. Maybe I'm just an open source purist. However, I will say that in almost all tests with websites I am actually using Firefox is faster. (Maybe not that much of a purist: I do use Chrome at work as we're using various Google products... docs, meet, etc, and those work better on Chrome. Go figure.)
- jupp0r 3y ago
  WebRTC support in FireFox and Safari had been abysmal for years. This has now gotten much better.
- samcheng 3y ago
  When it first came out, Chrome was much, much more performant than Firefox, and had better standards compliance than Safari. It was just a better browsing experience. V8 was a big deal performance-wise. Firefox has since largely caught-up from a performance perspective, although there is still some functionality inconvenience. Of course the stated attitude toward the user is night and day - I switched back to Firefox about the same time they started integrating Gmail / Google accounts into Chrome.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - troupo 3y ago
    > When it first came out, Chrome was much, much more performant than Firefox, and had better standards compliance than Safari When it first came out, it was almost literally Safari (well, WebKit).
  - mshroyer 3y ago
    Another key differentiator for Chrome, when it came out, was its process isolation model. Firefox has that too now.
- StewardMcOy 3y ago
  I wouldn't underestimate the impact the Chrome TV ads had on regular computer users. The banners atop Google search results encouraging people to switch also played a big role. by the time Chrome launched, I think there were a ton of people who were sick to death of hearing one extended family member or another who was into tech cajole them to drop Internet Explorer. Switching to Chrome was easy. Just click the link that Google gave them, and plus, they were familiar with it from TV.
RagnarD 3y ago
Any thoughts on pros and cons of usung Brave browser on iOS?
raydiatian 3y ago
So stop using chrome. Tell your CTO that your engineer department no longer wants to develop for chrome as the primary web app target.
atty 3y ago
I think the Ars writer here is very uninformed. Floc is completely different from Topics, and if you actually read the Topics spec, it seems to be significantly better than 3rd party cookies? At least to me. Maybe I’m missing something.
- youngtaff 3y ago
  Topics is a refinement of FloC… no third-party cookies and no Topics would be significantly better but Google is an adtech company and there’s anti-competitive concerns from other ad tech providers
Schnitz 3y ago
I’ve been waiting for years for Safari to support multiple profiles so I can have a work and personal profile, instead of using Chrome for work. Finally this year we’re getting that, goodbye chrome, it’s been a fun 10 years. Unfortunately Chrome turned into a bloated mess over time, even before this news I was waiting to switch.
yoyohello13 3y ago
Firefox.
Gustomaximus 3y ago
The silver lining is maybe we can return to the days of browser wars. Chrome came out of nowhere to win this and it seemed to dial down in prominance. Would be great to see more attention being brought to the independent browsers: Firefox, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi etc Not sure if we are there yet, but seems we are heading that direction.
- slashtab 3y ago
  You shouldn't be suggesting Opera. Opera is full of Chinese foot print.
  - jlarocco 3y ago
    I still miss the original Opera browser. It was lightweight and fast, but still managed to have a built-in mail client, RSS reader, and IRC client. All with a consistent and clean UI that treated the user like an adult. Maybe I'm just old, but I hate the flat "everything looks like a webpage" UIs in today's browsers.
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      That's not the original Opera. That's middle-aged Opera at best, maybe even over the hill Opera. I was there for nearly all of it. I first played with the original Opera when it came out of beta in '96, as an attempt at an alternative to my regulars of Netscape and Thomas Bruce's Cello. It had none of that email or RSS or IRC, just a clean and simple MDI browsing experience. It was great. By '97 and '98, their capabilities (they added JS, cookies, and image blocking) and performance were solid enough that Opera became my primary browser. Opera, during '98 and '99, was absolutely the best browser UX around, for me anyway. MDI made up for Windows 95's and later 98's windowing UI which never anticipated that users might have dozens of web pages open at once completely destroying the utility of the Taskbar. Opera's MDI, like Excel's MDI had done for accountants a decade earlier, was great for "power users" like me, while everyone else making browsers (mostly Netscape and Microsoft but there were a few others) seemed to be targeting newbies or "the enterprise". (The Web was early then, and bringing in new people faster than just about any tech had ever done before, but it didn't have much of the value it does today, so I guess it was reasonable to target new and casual users on the road to critical mass, but after MDI there was almost no going back for me.) Opera 4, in mid 2000, soon after I joined staff@mozilla.org to help lead the Mozilla project, was the last version I used with any regularity, mostly because I really disliked the redesign and they began cluttering things with each new release while I was trying to convince Mozilla to do the opposite and simplify. Opera did introduce an MDI switching toolbar then, which is sort of like tabs but really isn't, and that was a good step. But I'd used an actual tabbed browser in the late 90s on occasion, Adam Stiles' Netcaptor, and Opera's MDI toolbar wasn't that. It helped the MDI experience some, but it didn't transform it into tabbed browsing in any meaningful way. Then Opera 5 introduced the banner ad later that year, just as Mozilla's browser component from the larger internet suite was starting to get decent, good enough that I stopped calling myself an Opera user/fan/booster and started identifying as a Mozilla user. (The integrated search box on the Opera 5 toolbar did inspire us though, so about a year later we put one in the young Firefox toolbar.) I checked in with most new Opera releases for many years, but by 2002 Blake and I were deep into working on Firefox and so I was able to help design in some of Opera's earlier simplicity, but with tabs rather than MDI. Rather than wait for Opera to get things back on track, I simply started building the browser I wanted with Firefox. By the time Opera added email in 2003 and RSS and IRC in 2004, Opera was 8 and 9 years old. Jón S. von Tetzchner's original Opera browser was EOL in 2012 when Presto got cancelled, and was probably dead a year earlier when Jón was forced out (and perhaps even a year before that, when he stepped down as CEO) so yeah, email and RSS and IRC are almost exactly mid-life features in my book. Considering that Opera never recovered after those features were added suggests it was probably over the hill already. Today, and for the last 7 years or so, Opera is little more than a Chinese equity firm's mostly meaningless plaything.
mattxxx 3y ago
Glad this is getting press! Google was playing 3D chess when they started developing Chrome, and when they started making moves to strip away things like user agent strings, they were really just making the final moves of a campaign set years before to create a walled garden of ads data.
JohnBooty 3y ago
Congratulations to everybody who's been working overtime to simp for Chrome for so long. Firefox has had its ups and downs, but it and its progenitors have been great daily drivers for me over 20 years now. It's not too late. The best time to switch was, well, forever ago -- but today is also a great time to switch. Get on the fucking bus.
noman-land 3y ago
Hey guys, please stop giving market share to Chrome. Firefox is not only an objectively better browser but you're supporting an open web instead of a terrifying data behemoth.
- hollowturtle 3y ago
  I think here on hn many people us Firefox, with Chrome as backup for institutional sites that won’t work on FF(at least it’s the case for me). Or other alternativies or all of them interchangeably based on purpose. What makes the real market share is the rest of world outside of hn
  - reacharavindh 3y ago
    It is really hard to fight the advertising and luring of The Google machine. I never mind being annoying to my friends and relatives and talk about how Firefox is a safer and better alternative. People are often surprised that a choice even exists. To many just outside my circle, browser == Chrome , mail == Gmail, phone == Android, maps == Google Maps, payment solution == Gpay, and instant communication == WhatsApp. It is hard to beat free. My own 74 year old dad says.. be practical, I don’t care if Google wants to profile me as a 74 year old man interested in watching my regional language news and religious videos. Nor do I care if Google knows that I spend the little retirement money of mine buying these medicines or paying for the taxis. They can try targeting ads to me all they want, but good luck to them, I’m not going to book an expensive holiday in the Himalayas, nor am I going to buy something I don’t want to buy. I just want something that works in a way I have gotten used to. I don’t want change at my age. I can sympathize with his argument. I just wish young people don’t find an argument like his.. We have regulations preventing some rich dude flooding the market with free product to gain a monopoly and then charge exorbitant prices. Why not the same for digital services in this internet age? I wish we regulated internet services the same way. No “free” email, chat, social services paid for by creepy ad companies. The real cost of these services at the scale of the number of users is minuscule anyway. The field Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple plays at should be leveled for new competition - that is a Government’s duty to enable.
skybrian 3y ago
Looking at 'Ad topics' in Chrome settings, they seem extremely generic and barely count as targeting. If disclosing these topics to a bunch of websites harms me, I don't see how? I don't care who knows them. Here you go: * Arts & Entertainment * Computers & Electronics * Internet & telecom * News * Online communities Seems reasonably accurate, but so what? What am I missing?
- RubyRidgeRandy 3y ago
  At the end of the day, I think the categories are very broad and better respect people's privacy compared to what we had before. Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take. These proposals were made directly because of legislation like GDPR. It's not as if Google got up one day and said "Let's make our job harder."
  - rapind 3y ago
    > Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take. I don't think I'm in the "privacy community". It's my opinion that advertising will always exist, but tracking is complete horseshit and should be abolished ASAP. I don't think this is a very unpopular opinion either. There seems to be an attempt to Stockholm us all into thinking tracking is a necessary evil we must accept.
    - yetanotherasian 3y ago
      I'm not apologizing for google, but think many people who are against all forms of this aren't really thinking the problem through. The same way newspapers said "stop linking headlines to us" and then once some popular service did and all their traffic disappeared they came back and said "oh, wait, no, you can link to us" For the ads, a large portion of the internet that people want (maybe not you in particular but lots of people in general), run on ads. Arstechnica runs on ads, theverge runs on ads, slashdot runs on ads, the register runs on ads, kotaku runs on ads, tech crunch run on ads. To name a few sites that might be popular here If those sites can't support themselves they'll more than likely disappear. If all those sites disappeared I feel like plenty of people (maybe not you but more people than not) would realize that they thought they wanted (zero disclose) lead to outcomes they didn't want I feel like Google is genuinely trying to do something positive here. Provide a way of those sites to still target ads, still check if an ad was effective, still try to check for bad actors making fake clicks, but also be practically un-attributable to a single user. Going through the actual specs, they really are trying to make it so you can't track and individual but sites can still function based on ads. Is it in Google own interest? Yes. But it's also in the interest of sites people want which means it's also in the interest of the people who want those sites. Apple on the other hand, would prefer you be tracked directly by having you download an app for each site where that app can track you way more than a browser with these features can track you.
ultimoo 3y ago
I stopped using Chrome and uninstalled it from all my devices a year ago. It was hard at first, but you get used to other browsers pretty quickly (took me two weeks). Safari on macOS works like a champ, and if I'm doing web development I switch to Firefox which has excellent developer tools (remember firebug?)
imiric 3y ago
All this focus on cookies and FLoC feels like smoke and mirrors from Google. Modern adtech can track users regardless if cookies are enabled or not, and whether they enable this new Chrome feature or not, via browser fingerprinting. They've been doing this for years. So this new "privacy sandbox" is a diversion to the public, and particularly to law makers, that signals "see, we care about user privacy". When in fact it ultimately makes no impact on their revenue. The public and law makers are barely starting to get an understanding about cookies, and there's a growing concern about them, so this is Google being proactive towards the blowback. Fingerprinting is much more complex to understand, and concern about it is so under the radar, that it will take many more years for the focus to catch up to these nefarious practices. The frog is being boiled[1], make no mistake about that. [1]: https://gazoche.xyz/posts/boiling-frog/ https://gazoche.xyz/posts/boiling-frog/
- bad_user 3y ago
  In the EU, as far as the ePrivacy Directive (cookie law) is concerned, fingerprinting is similar to using a tracking cookie, even if no cookies are actually involved. And as far as GDPR is concerned, fingerprinting can identify a visitor, it counts as personal data, therefore you need a legal basis for processing it. Not sure what the point you're trying to make is. Also, Google under Privacy Sandbox has been exploring ways to introduce a fingerprinting limitations and a budget. Which may as well be smoke and mirrors, but if you watch their marketing materials, they talk of fingerprinting in general.
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    Yeah and the Legal Basis will be something like “we need to track users to improve our services”
    - troupo 3y ago
      They are trying to present that as legal basis, and it's not.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Um, sweety, Chrome is the user-tracking ad platform.
ivansavz 3y ago
Key actionable info: to fix this, go to this URL: chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off the toggles on each of the three subpages. Alternatively, go to this URL https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ to fix this permanently.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Mozilla actively supports online ads and tracking. Without their partnership with Google, they could not continue as a going concern for very long. The deception is to make people believe that studying them as ad targets through their internet use can be "private". Many will believe this nonsense. Including regulators. "It's OK, folks. Privacy is preserved." Green light to keep on tracking, collecting data and serving ads. But the study of people's internet use to enable programmtic advertising _is_ the problem. There will be more ads. They will be more personal. The www will become even more annoying. Perhaps moreso than any other medium that has come before it. To Mozilla, there can be no www without advertising. The truth is that there can be no so-called "tech" companies, monopolisng intermediaries, without programmatic internet advertising. The www does not need it and the original www did not have it. First Mozilla partners with Yahoo. Then Google. Perhaps Meta will be next. Mozilla is no different than so-called "tech" companies in at least one regard: it cannot find a "business model" besides internet advertising. https://analyticsindiamag.com/despite-clashes-in-the-past-mozilla-partners-with-meta-on-interoperable-private-attribution/ https://analyticsindiamag.com/despite-clashes-in-the-past-mo... https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/ipa-the-meta-and-mozilla-attribution-framework-gains-traction-at-the-w3c-conference/ https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/ipa-the-meta-and-mozilla... https://www.admonsters.com/eletters/mozilla-and-metas-ipa-framework-gains-steam-at-w3c-conference-the-atlantic-pushes-into-tv-and-film/ https://www.admonsters.com/eletters/mozilla-and-metas-ipa-fr...
  - whydoyoucare 3y ago
    Yeah, that is my understanding as well. While many promote Firefox as an alternative to Google Chrome, it simply lacks adequate proof that Firefox is any better than Chrome at tracking. Else, how does Mozilla survive?
tapatio 3y ago
"Do no evil". What a joke.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  "No, do evil!"
hooby 3y ago
I'm wondering about the "now". Didn't the very initial release of Chrome, many years ago, already create a unique, identifiable ID per user, and open a connection to phone home to Google servers (using that unique ID) on every single key-press and mouse click done anywhere in the browser?
hooby 3y ago
So, here's the question: When a large, publicly traded ad-company (that relies on collecting data and tracking users for most of it's income), creates a product that costs them quite a lot of money to make, and then gives that product to you for free... Do you expect them: A.) to be taking a loss on that product because they really just want to gift it to you from the goodness of their heart with no ulterior motives? B.) to actually have another way to make money from that product, which makes the whole endeavor financially worthwhile to them?
- bjt 3y ago
  It's a good point but also not that cut and dry. Chrome started as Webkit, which forked from KHTML, which was part of the very open source KDE. Has Google benefitted more from other people's open source contributions, or have we benefitted more from Google's open source contributions? The answer is not obvious to me.
  - yunohn 3y ago
    Google impacts infinitely more lives than KDE does…
    - mcherm 3y ago
      I think your math is wrong. If (as was stated) Google's Chrome is based on KDE, than any user of Google Chrome is necessarily impacted by KDE. Meanwhile there could in theory be some user of KDE who has never used Chrome. So the set of lives affected by KDE is the same or larger than the set affected by Chrome.
      - Kwpolska 3y ago
        Your argument works only if we consider being affected by something to be very broadly applicable and unconditionally transitive. Someone who uses Chrome from version 100 onwards might be using something with traces of KDE code, but those traces are probably so small after all these years and forks that I wouldn't count them.
Timber-6539 3y ago
Not that am in support of Google's ad model or use Chrome with defaults but I would personally take this over 3rd party cookies given the choice.
- hef19898 3y ago
  How about, well, just neither?
  - Timber-6539 3y ago
    Depends on your situation.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      How so? I still fail to see any benefit for me from being spied on by the likes of Google only to show me adds that, despite all the profilong they do, fail to have any relevance for me. And browser choice is still up to me. If Google and Chrome are mandatory for work, well, tough luck. But I do have the feeling that the enterprise versions are much less intrusive. And even if, I never do private stuff at my work machines and devices anyway.
ColinWright 3y ago
I use Firefox almost exclusively, and have done for years. But there are sites that only work with Chrome. So far I've always either: (a) Ignored them, or (b) Used an incognito window. But now, when I'm forced to use Chrome, I'm seriously looking at disguising my IP address, etc. But this is not my field. Would a VPN do what I need? Where are instructions that a n00b can follow? Every site I've found so far has either been: (i) Advertising; (ii) Assuming too much competence; (iii) Out of date, or (iv) Wrong. Clear, robust, and up-to-date advice welcome, as I'm sure it would be for many.
- sah2ed 3y ago
  > But this is not my field. > Would a VPN do what I need? Where are instructions that a n00b can follow? Never used them myself but lots of HN commenters think highly of the VPN services offered by Mullvad [0]. In fact, right now, Mullvad is currently on the HN frontpage [1], from a blog post by Tailscale. 0: https://mullvad.net/en https://mullvad.net/en 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37420053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37420053
Unfrozen0688 3y ago
Using Firefox or Brave mostly now, good to have another article to use against Chrome. Not to mention MS Edge...
mwinatschek 3y ago
I just want to say that I’m glad Apple does the exact opposite with Safari of what hostile things Google, Microsoft, and sometimes even Mozilla do to their browsers. Call me an Apple fanboy all day long but they proved for years that they care about speed, privacy, and even simplicity.
alufers 3y ago
I'm kind of torn on this. The general idea that the user's browser tracks him by itself instead of utilizing cookies or fingerprinting seems like a step up for privacy. Obviously the devil is in the details - Google controls that whole algorithm, and there obviously is a conflict of interest. But the alternative that the people who are against it are proposing is either to keep the status quo or kindly ask Google (and other ad companies) to stop existing, which is not gonna happen. They seem to ignore the fact that ad-tech is a huge industry and a large part of the internet relies on it. Basically the only way to make it go away would be to outlaw it. (Also so nobody accuses me as being pro-ads: I hate ads and tracking, but sort of in a way like I hate being sick. I can reduce my exposure to ads and tracking (adblock, not using certain apps, etc.), but I know that complaining about it won't make it go away)
- throwitaway156 3y ago
  This API wont remove or deprecate the already existing tracking methods, third party cookies can be disabled but alternative practices have been developed a good while ago (and new ones are actively being found). Advertisement networks _will_ find a way (avoiding fingerprinting is impossible, unless all browser companies decide to merge; exposing hardware to the web is the new trend for web technologies, and hardware can be extremely unique especially when combined with an IP yada yada) without depending on Google, their competitor in advertising, for their own product. Google, however, will hand your search history out to any website for free(?)
  - izacus 3y ago
    The existence of this APIs will be very useful to argue that server-side data collection is not reasonable under GDPR anymore. I hope it gets implemented because it will give significant ammunition to us in Europe to make server-side behaviour tracking marked as unreasonable under GDPR provisions.
    - Silhouette 3y ago
      How would that work in practice? I'm not sure what kind of "server-side data collection" you're arguing against here.
0x49d1 3y ago
Vivaldi's team made a statement on the matter: https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-viva... Shortly: they disable the tracking forcibly, even if "someone" tries to enable it remotely or via flags.
jononomo 3y ago
I like the Brave browser, but it is based on Chromium -- how badly is it affected? Should I just restrict myself to Safari now? I don't really like Firefox for some reason.
emmanueloga_ 3y ago
I found about https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ from a web search. Has anyone here tried it or can recommend any other alternative firefox build without telemetry?
maxslch 3y ago
lol just updated my chrome before I saw this, I instantly got what it's about and didn't allow, why would I want any ads at all, I have a blocker, it doesn't matter, but that's sneaky from them and unhumane to push for that.
sizzle 3y ago
Beginning of the end

974 points by edvinbesic 3y ago

Gud 3y ago

Why do people still use Chrome? I can kind of understand Google search, Gmail and Maps(though search kind of sucks nowadays), but chrome is turning into one of the most user hostile pieces of software.

mcv 3y ago
And there are perfectly fine alternatives that do not sacrifice features or convenience in the slightest. I don't see a legitimate use case for Chrome.

tikimcfee 3y ago

Just… just stop using google. Stop. Stop excusing it. “It’s work. It’s my hobby. I like it. But I can make it work.” Just stop. It’s only hard because you think you’re in this world technology that’s more important than you as a human. Uninstall chrome. Tell others to do it. Tell others why. Tell others the lies, deceit, marginalization, and corruption. And then don’t participate.

turtleyacht 3y ago

Wonder if there is a "Gentoo for browsers," where you specify certain parts of the stack: layout engine, HTTP engine (cURL), JS engine (V8, none) and conveniences (password management, bookmarks), and the script builds it for you. The conceit is the ability to view responses as nodes in a graph, and laying filters on top. The tradeoff for performance being introspection and control.

clouddrover 3y ago

The solution is simple: use Firefox.

joobus 3y ago

I wonder how Brave and Microsoft Edge will handle this change. Are they also going to ship this "feature"?

dylan604 3y ago
Everything I'm seeing is that it is Chrome doing this, not Chromium. If the Googs decides to add features on top of Chromium in its Chrome release, that does not mean that other Chromium based browsers will have those changes automatically as well. It totally makes sense to me that Googs would not want these in the base Chromium as it's the secret sauce just for the Googs
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- joobus 3y ago
  I would think Google would want this in Brave and Edge also. Google will want to advertise to the users of these browsers even though they aren't using Chrome.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Then why are the articles not saying Chromium and specifying Chrome? Has Chrome become the new Kleenex/Xerox/Rollerblade?
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      Most people reading articles have no idea what Chromium is and how it differs from Chrome.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  The code for it is included with Chromium. Responsibly phasing out 3rd party cookies is important for the whole ecosystem. https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:components/browsing_topics/ https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:com...

fh9302 3y ago

It's nefarious how they ask you if you want to turn on "ad privacy", indicating that this feature increases your privacy when in reality it does the opposite.

afavour 3y ago
Technically they’re correct: the privacy offered by this new system is superior to that which is offered by the web with no tracking protection. Thinking about it in a very abstract way I find the whole thing fascinating. Google is clearly terrified that the tracking protection offered by other browsers is going to become the norm and they’re trying to head that off at the pass by implementing this compromise. But I’m not sure why they’re all that worried about it, they still have the lions share or the browser market. Maybe they’re worried about incoming legislation?
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  It’s beautiful, from a sociopath’s perspective, if you think about it. “If you let me punch your teeth out, the stabbings will stop (sometime in the future, terms and conditions may apply)” All while refusing to acknowledge that there is an option that requires neither punching nor stabbing. To an uninformed user that takes Google’s words at face value it sounds like an upgrade.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  If I'm understanding correctly, they're not turning on some other tracking prevention when you enable this "feature". It's strictly a privacy downgrade.
  - Scion9066 3y ago
    Not yet but they can't just turn off third party cookies arbitrarily in their browser without giving time for sites and advertisers to update their systems to account for the removal. They're already facing anticompetitive/monopoly scrutiny on many other fronts, they don't need to shoot themselves in the foot in the advertising space as well. Thus the first step is to implement a replacement technology first and then make the change.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Time to uninstall chrome! I keep it around just incase but nah.

Calamitous 3y ago
Out of curiousity, what do you use instead?
- bigyikes 3y ago
  Not the OP, but I use Safari on my personal devices, or Firefox if I have to use Windows. The efficiency of Safari is unbeatable, and I prefer its UX. I also use Kagi instead of Google search.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Same (except the search)
- sdm 3y ago
  Firefox -- faster, better feature like container tabs, more secure and more private
- hobobaggins 3y ago
  Brave, Firefox, or Vivaldi.
midoridensha 3y ago
For almost all the times when you really need Chrome because Firefox doesn't work, Chromium will work just fine. You probably don't need Chrome.

jsnell 3y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401909

timw4mail 3y ago

And how is Chrome not the new Internet Explorer?

dylan604 3y ago
Because the new Internet Explorer is Chrome-wannabe
rhaway84773 3y ago
Because Firefox exists. And anyone can use Chromium to compete with Chrome fairly rapidly. It’s not the new IE. In my mind it’s worse than the new IE because it achieves similar goals as the IE abuse but without necessarily doing anything illegal.
- netdoll 3y ago
  Mozilla and Opera existed at the time, as well as a bountiful amount of IE shells which essentially acted as the Chromium derivative equivalents. Outside of Chrome (technically) shipping the same binaries across all the platforms it supports, and using scope creep in a more subtle way compared to 90s-era IE, I don't see how the situation is materially different between now and then.
  - rhaway84773 3y ago
    This is not exactly right. Netscape Navigator was the original browser. Microsoft invested a lot of money to bring IE up to par and exceed Netscape’s capabilities. And once they wiped out Netscape they coasted and used IE as a Trojan horse to control the web. It was after IE6’s stagnation that Firefox was spun out of Netscape and took some time to compete. Firefox was first released in 2004 and IE6 in 2001. Opera which had been around was proprietary. To the extent they were interested in making the internet a better place it was only to serve their company interests. Thars very different from the situation we have now where Firefox is well known and open source, and even Chromium’s open source so it can be leveraged by better stewards of the internet. Don’t get me wrong. My argument is not that Google is better than Microsoft. My argument is simply that the situation we’re facing right now is very different from the IE era. If anything, I’m arguing that the Chrome era is worse because of how much more insidious Google’s actions are. It was easy for the EU to essentially eliminate the IE threat by forcing MS to unbundle IE and for Firefox (and later chrome) to replace IE purely on the basis of providing a better software. Replacing Chrome on the other hand is a very different kind of problem that is possibly much harder.

arpowers 3y ago

My friend Jake runs an analytics company. He's faced enormous challenges due to Google's "privacy" policies... Google is removing nearly all access to user data, they don't even like you looking at the user agent string (which issues a warning)... not to mention its impossible to know about search traffic and even referring urls. Meanwhile Google has access to all this data, so he tells me all this is just gaslighting so they can illicitly protect their monopoly on web data.

sensanaty 3y ago
No offence, but your friend Jake can go fuck himself. I have very little trust for Google and other megacorps like it, but I have even less trust for parasitic entities like Jake that just piggyback on top of Google's already horrid practices to extract wealth from, so you'll find no sympathy for Jake from me.
afavour 3y ago
> Meanwhile Google has access to all this data I’m loathe the defend Google but I don’t think this is the case. The replacement for user agent sniffing (client hints? I forget) is a universal thing and I don’t think Google has a secret back door tracking mechanism their ad network is able to use. It would certainly be a big story if they did.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  Google’s ad network might not have access. But does Google have access? Because there are many ways Google can leverage this data without giving their ad network access. Privacy isn’t just about privacy from ads. There are all sorts of non ad related privacy abuses that can exist.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    A while ago now I booked a room on Expedia, which ended in me getting a confirmation email with an itinerary to my Gmail backed address. Lo and behold, few minutes later a CTA pops up on my Android phone offering to create a matching trip in Google's trip planning product. I'm sure it's all above board once you got into the fine print but it was not a pleasant experience.

bigyikes 3y ago

I heard about this the other day and didn’t think much of it. I got the actual update today on my work laptop and… just wow. How did the folks at Google ship this with a straight face? The changeboarding modal basically lies to your face. I’ve always felt a little weird about Google’s tracking, but this takes it to another level. Creepy as heck.

arendtio 3y ago
When I saw that dialog, I didn't know which button to click. I knew I didn't want to share the topics I am interested in or have personalized / more relevant ads of any kind, but the text was so confusion and mixing so many things (like activate the privacy feature when in fact you are activating the tracking feature). In the end, I reverted to clicking the non-primary button (which you are not supposed to click) and checked in the settings everything was in order.
choppaface 3y ago
I’m thoroughly impressed how HN also buried this story so quickly; usually something so dramatic would stick on the front page for days. Speaks a lot about Google-biases in the content moderation of HN.
wbl 3y ago
Because they don't get to kill third party cookies without shipping it.
- hirsin 3y ago
  Context? That whole project was kind of a cluster when I was involved with it, how does this help? Or is it more, without a replacement for 3p cookie tracking they couldn't break it (useful uses of 3p cookies be damned)?
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Regulators in the US, EU and UK have made it clear that Chrome can't remove support for 3p cookies without building a replacement feature that works for non-Google ad networks.

javajosh 3y ago

I use Chrome in development on a Windows box. Here is my experience with this upgrade: 1. Upgraded manually from 116.0.5845.179 to 116.0.5845.180 through About dialog. 2. Restart. No notification that anything has changed. 3. Go to settings, privacy and security, privacy guide, and on the 4th page (only 3 pips!) Or go to settings, privacy and security, Ad privacy (the new element) 4. The privacy guide blurb: Privacy Sandbox trial Chrome is exploring new features that allow sites to deliver the same browsing experience using less of your data Under Ad privacy: 5. Ad topics: Site-suggested ads. Based on your activity on a site. This setting is on. 6. Site-suggested ads. Based on your activity on a site. This setting is on. 7. Ad measurement. Sites and advertisers can understand how ads perform. This setting is on. This roll out is filled with dark patterns. At (2) there is no notification that anything has changed. If not for this article, I would not have known about this at all. At (3) the feature seems intentionally hidden. At (4) the description of these features misleads the user that the purpose is to "use less of their data". This is false, or at least badly misleading. At (5,6,7) they've defaulted all new "features" to "on". This is all so shady, and very un-Google like. I have such high regard for the Chrome team: was there push back on this? Do they realize what a bad look this is?

dylan604 3y ago
> Do they realize what a bad look this is? Let's say that they do realize it. The 0.x% of users that are aware of, understand, and will do anything other than just blindly continuing to use the software is an acceptable number of lost users. In other words, everyone reading HN could stop using Chrome right now, and Googs would not notice the blip
bhaney 3y ago
> This is all so shady, and very un-Google like Where have you been the last several years?
- javajosh 3y ago
  I was expecting this response, and let me say: it fills me with distaste. You cut off any possibility of improvement, on their part, because no matter what they do, you won't accept it. It is the opposite of constructive criticism: it is an ideological stance.

charcircuit 3y ago

>this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask This is factually incorrect. It works like third party cookies, but with privacy. A web page can only retrieve a topic if that site has already observe you visit pages of that topic. In order for you to observe a site that site must send a fetch request to you or embed you in an iframe. If a random site calls document.browsingTopics() they get no topics as not enough data has been observed by them.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

chatmasta 3y ago

Disable it here: chrome://settings/adPrivacy (for now)

_moof 3y ago
You can also disable it by going here: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/
JKCalhoun 3y ago
Wow, Chrome has become Facebook ... having to drill in and find/disable newly added opt-out features.

sharts 3y ago

People hate on Google yet...continue to use their services and want to work there. Therefore, people do not disapprove.

phendrenad2 3y ago
Perhaps those are mutually-exclusive groups of people.

MBCook 3y ago

“I want real Chrome on iOS. Safari sucks! It’s the new IE 6! Chrome is moving the web forward!” Yeah. Things are going great in Chrome world. Totally should give them dominance over the one sliver they don’t control. (I have no problem with letting people have FF/etc. but let’s face it, it will be 90%+ Chrome within days)

SquareWheel 3y ago

> Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," Ars seems to be confusing the topics API with the privacy sandbox as a whole. Most features are early, like client hints, while others like privacy budget haven't even been released yet. https://privacysandbox.com/open-web/#proposals-for-the-web https://privacysandbox.com/open-web/#proposals-for-the-web

ericpauley 3y ago
The whole article is a mess of confusion. FLoC and Topics have nothing in common functionally, aside from being useful for ad targeting.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  IIRC the failure of the first lead to the second. And if Steve Gibson is to be believed Topics is not only an improvement, it's an unqualified good. (I'm not yet convinced though if Google didn't have so many other harvesting avenues I'd see it as better for privacy too.)
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    > Topics is not only an improvement, it's an unqualified good. It's still sending interest information to advertisers, so it's an unqualified negative. Stop sending information to advertisers. Kill third-party cookies, and anything purporting to replace them.

darrmit 3y ago

As much as I hate what Google has done with Chrome and I choose not to use it, the comparisons to the IE6-8 dominance are even more acute when you consider that Chrome is also successful in the enterprise due to its support for both typical group policy/Mobile Device Management configuration as well as its integration into Google Workspace. Edit: I had initially said “dominant” in the enterprise, but I imagine that title still goes to Edge? It would be impressive if it wasn’t so depressing and gross.

savingsPossible 3y ago

In what sense did google 'get its way'? Was there some legal attempt to stop them that they somehow defeated?

ericpauley 3y ago

Our research group does work in this space[1], so I’ll claim some familiarity. This article has multiple problems: 1. Privacy Sandbox is a project, consisting of many proposals. To pitch it as some cohesive product is misleading. 2. Related: FLoC and Topics are completely separate things, aside from existing under the same project. 3. Topics is reducible to (implementable using) third-party cookies. While the proposal has issues and doesn’t resist tracking as well as Google claims (see below article), Ars’ implication that this is somehow making Chrome less privacy-preserving is patently false. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03825 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03825

StewardMcOy 3y ago
I didn't read the Ars article as saying FLoC or Topics make Chrome less privacy-preserving than it was before, but rather that, once Chrome disables third-party cookies, they make Chrome less privacy-preserving than other browsers with third-party cookies disabled. What the author would prefer is that Google also disable third-party cookies and also not ship FLoC or Topics.
- summerlight 3y ago
  > What the author would prefer is that Google also disable third-party cookies and also not ship FLoC or Topics. That's not an option now thanks to multiple antitrust regulatories. Google actually tried to get rid of 3p cookies to use it as an advantage against competitors as well as privacy friendly PR but this has been blocked. One example from CMA (but not limited to): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62052c52e90e077f7881c975/Google_Sandbox_.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62052c52e90e0...
  - StewardMcOy 3y ago
    Sorry for responding 12 hours later, but I felt I should actually read the ruling here before I replied. It's certainly interesting. The CMA seems to be attempting to balance interests of multiple parties, including both user privacy, healthy competition in the ads space, and the ability for digital publishers to generate revenue from displaying ads. However, most of it appears to focus on the way Google's superior access to information could distort competition. It's not just about cookies. For example. Google could mine synced history data from Chrome. Now, I'm not so naive as to think this would actually happen, but again, the Ars author's solution here could solve that particular problem: If Google ceased all behavior-based advertising in favor of, for example, subject-based advertising, there would be no distortions to competition. Google can't track you, and neither can other advertisers. Everyone has a level playing field. Of course, that would drop revenues for digital publishers and advertising networks, including Google, but it would solve the problems of user privacy and distorted competition. The one thing this ruling makes very clear though, is that it's very difficult to balance these concerns while Google makes a browser. There's a conflict between Google running a behavior-based advertising network and shipping a browser, and these regulatory bodies seem to be bending over backwards to try to find a solution where both of these things can exist. They could most certainly have taken the much easier road of forcing Google to discontinue Chrome.

doublepg23 3y ago

My friend who was the biggest Google evangelist 10yrs ago who went through a round of interviews there (stellar Kotlin programmer) has completely written off the company after this announcement some months ago. He's committed to deGoogling his life now and is even migrating off Gmail this weekend - I think I'll be joining him.

deleted 3y ago
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noman-land 3y ago
As someone who has left, let me try to help. Nextcloud Syncthing Firefox Bitwarden Aegis GrapheneOS F-Droid ntfy NewPipe Signal Matrix Stop using email or do custom domain + some service. Sync locally with Thunderbird or whatever you like.

imgabe 3y ago

Switched to Firefox years ago. Hopefully now more people will.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"Part III. Put Users First; the Rest Will Follow Like most companies, Google has a mission statement or "philosophy." Google's philosophy is divided into 10 points; each point is one sentence long. The first and most interesting is quoted in the title of this part of the book. Unlike most corporate mission statements, this phrase did not come about through long committee discussions: This statement is Larry Page's mantra. Early on, when people asked him about financing his projects, he always replied with something like, "Don't worry about it. If our users are satisfied, if we give them all they want and more, we'll be able to find some money."" https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-google-way/9781593271848/pt03.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-google-way/97815932...

linuxhansl 3y ago

Honestly I never quite understood why most folks switched so easily and unquestioningly to Chrome. Maybe I'm just an open source purist. However, I will say that in almost all tests with websites I am actually using Firefox is faster. (Maybe not that much of a purist: I do use Chrome at work as we're using various Google products... docs, meet, etc, and those work better on Chrome. Go figure.)

jupp0r 3y ago
WebRTC support in FireFox and Safari had been abysmal for years. This has now gotten much better.
samcheng 3y ago
When it first came out, Chrome was much, much more performant than Firefox, and had better standards compliance than Safari. It was just a better browsing experience. V8 was a big deal performance-wise. Firefox has since largely caught-up from a performance perspective, although there is still some functionality inconvenience. Of course the stated attitude toward the user is night and day - I switched back to Firefox about the same time they started integrating Gmail / Google accounts into Chrome.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- troupo 3y ago
  > When it first came out, Chrome was much, much more performant than Firefox, and had better standards compliance than Safari When it first came out, it was almost literally Safari (well, WebKit).
- mshroyer 3y ago
  Another key differentiator for Chrome, when it came out, was its process isolation model. Firefox has that too now.
StewardMcOy 3y ago
I wouldn't underestimate the impact the Chrome TV ads had on regular computer users. The banners atop Google search results encouraging people to switch also played a big role. by the time Chrome launched, I think there were a ton of people who were sick to death of hearing one extended family member or another who was into tech cajole them to drop Internet Explorer. Switching to Chrome was easy. Just click the link that Google gave them, and plus, they were familiar with it from TV.

RagnarD 3y ago

Any thoughts on pros and cons of usung Brave browser on iOS?

raydiatian 3y ago

So stop using chrome. Tell your CTO that your engineer department no longer wants to develop for chrome as the primary web app target.

atty 3y ago

I think the Ars writer here is very uninformed. Floc is completely different from Topics, and if you actually read the Topics spec, it seems to be significantly better than 3rd party cookies? At least to me. Maybe I’m missing something.

youngtaff 3y ago
Topics is a refinement of FloC… no third-party cookies and no Topics would be significantly better but Google is an adtech company and there’s anti-competitive concerns from other ad tech providers

Schnitz 3y ago

I’ve been waiting for years for Safari to support multiple profiles so I can have a work and personal profile, instead of using Chrome for work. Finally this year we’re getting that, goodbye chrome, it’s been a fun 10 years. Unfortunately Chrome turned into a bloated mess over time, even before this news I was waiting to switch.

yoyohello13 3y ago

Firefox.

Gustomaximus 3y ago

The silver lining is maybe we can return to the days of browser wars. Chrome came out of nowhere to win this and it seemed to dial down in prominance. Would be great to see more attention being brought to the independent browsers: Firefox, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi etc Not sure if we are there yet, but seems we are heading that direction.

slashtab 3y ago
You shouldn't be suggesting Opera. Opera is full of Chinese foot print.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  I still miss the original Opera browser. It was lightweight and fast, but still managed to have a built-in mail client, RSS reader, and IRC client. All with a consistent and clean UI that treated the user like an adult. Maybe I'm just old, but I hate the flat "everything looks like a webpage" UIs in today's browsers.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    That's not the original Opera. That's middle-aged Opera at best, maybe even over the hill Opera. I was there for nearly all of it. I first played with the original Opera when it came out of beta in '96, as an attempt at an alternative to my regulars of Netscape and Thomas Bruce's Cello. It had none of that email or RSS or IRC, just a clean and simple MDI browsing experience. It was great. By '97 and '98, their capabilities (they added JS, cookies, and image blocking) and performance were solid enough that Opera became my primary browser. Opera, during '98 and '99, was absolutely the best browser UX around, for me anyway. MDI made up for Windows 95's and later 98's windowing UI which never anticipated that users might have dozens of web pages open at once completely destroying the utility of the Taskbar. Opera's MDI, like Excel's MDI had done for accountants a decade earlier, was great for "power users" like me, while everyone else making browsers (mostly Netscape and Microsoft but there were a few others) seemed to be targeting newbies or "the enterprise". (The Web was early then, and bringing in new people faster than just about any tech had ever done before, but it didn't have much of the value it does today, so I guess it was reasonable to target new and casual users on the road to critical mass, but after MDI there was almost no going back for me.) Opera 4, in mid 2000, soon after I joined staff@mozilla.org to help lead the Mozilla project, was the last version I used with any regularity, mostly because I really disliked the redesign and they began cluttering things with each new release while I was trying to convince Mozilla to do the opposite and simplify. Opera did introduce an MDI switching toolbar then, which is sort of like tabs but really isn't, and that was a good step. But I'd used an actual tabbed browser in the late 90s on occasion, Adam Stiles' Netcaptor, and Opera's MDI toolbar wasn't that. It helped the MDI experience some, but it didn't transform it into tabbed browsing in any meaningful way. Then Opera 5 introduced the banner ad later that year, just as Mozilla's browser component from the larger internet suite was starting to get decent, good enough that I stopped calling myself an Opera user/fan/booster and started identifying as a Mozilla user. (The integrated search box on the Opera 5 toolbar did inspire us though, so about a year later we put one in the young Firefox toolbar.) I checked in with most new Opera releases for many years, but by 2002 Blake and I were deep into working on Firefox and so I was able to help design in some of Opera's earlier simplicity, but with tabs rather than MDI. Rather than wait for Opera to get things back on track, I simply started building the browser I wanted with Firefox. By the time Opera added email in 2003 and RSS and IRC in 2004, Opera was 8 and 9 years old. Jón S. von Tetzchner's original Opera browser was EOL in 2012 when Presto got cancelled, and was probably dead a year earlier when Jón was forced out (and perhaps even a year before that, when he stepped down as CEO) so yeah, email and RSS and IRC are almost exactly mid-life features in my book. Considering that Opera never recovered after those features were added suggests it was probably over the hill already. Today, and for the last 7 years or so, Opera is little more than a Chinese equity firm's mostly meaningless plaything.

mattxxx 3y ago

Glad this is getting press! Google was playing 3D chess when they started developing Chrome, and when they started making moves to strip away things like user agent strings, they were really just making the final moves of a campaign set years before to create a walled garden of ads data.

JohnBooty 3y ago

Congratulations to everybody who's been working overtime to simp for Chrome for so long. Firefox has had its ups and downs, but it and its progenitors have been great daily drivers for me over 20 years now. It's not too late. The best time to switch was, well, forever ago -- but today is also a great time to switch. Get on the fucking bus.

noman-land 3y ago

Hey guys, please stop giving market share to Chrome. Firefox is not only an objectively better browser but you're supporting an open web instead of a terrifying data behemoth.

hollowturtle 3y ago
I think here on hn many people us Firefox, with Chrome as backup for institutional sites that won’t work on FF(at least it’s the case for me). Or other alternativies or all of them interchangeably based on purpose. What makes the real market share is the rest of world outside of hn
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  It is really hard to fight the advertising and luring of The Google machine. I never mind being annoying to my friends and relatives and talk about how Firefox is a safer and better alternative. People are often surprised that a choice even exists. To many just outside my circle, browser == Chrome , mail == Gmail, phone == Android, maps == Google Maps, payment solution == Gpay, and instant communication == WhatsApp. It is hard to beat free. My own 74 year old dad says.. be practical, I don’t care if Google wants to profile me as a 74 year old man interested in watching my regional language news and religious videos. Nor do I care if Google knows that I spend the little retirement money of mine buying these medicines or paying for the taxis. They can try targeting ads to me all they want, but good luck to them, I’m not going to book an expensive holiday in the Himalayas, nor am I going to buy something I don’t want to buy. I just want something that works in a way I have gotten used to. I don’t want change at my age. I can sympathize with his argument. I just wish young people don’t find an argument like his.. We have regulations preventing some rich dude flooding the market with free product to gain a monopoly and then charge exorbitant prices. Why not the same for digital services in this internet age? I wish we regulated internet services the same way. No “free” email, chat, social services paid for by creepy ad companies. The real cost of these services at the scale of the number of users is minuscule anyway. The field Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple plays at should be leveled for new competition - that is a Government’s duty to enable.

skybrian 3y ago

Looking at 'Ad topics' in Chrome settings, they seem extremely generic and barely count as targeting. If disclosing these topics to a bunch of websites harms me, I don't see how? I don't care who knows them. Here you go: * Arts & Entertainment * Computers & Electronics * Internet & telecom * News * Online communities Seems reasonably accurate, but so what? What am I missing?

RubyRidgeRandy 3y ago
At the end of the day, I think the categories are very broad and better respect people's privacy compared to what we had before. Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take. These proposals were made directly because of legislation like GDPR. It's not as if Google got up one day and said "Let's make our job harder."
- rapind 3y ago
  > Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take. I don't think I'm in the "privacy community". It's my opinion that advertising will always exist, but tracking is complete horseshit and should be abolished ASAP. I don't think this is a very unpopular opinion either. There seems to be an attempt to Stockholm us all into thinking tracking is a necessary evil we must accept.
  - yetanotherasian 3y ago
    I'm not apologizing for google, but think many people who are against all forms of this aren't really thinking the problem through. The same way newspapers said "stop linking headlines to us" and then once some popular service did and all their traffic disappeared they came back and said "oh, wait, no, you can link to us" For the ads, a large portion of the internet that people want (maybe not you in particular but lots of people in general), run on ads. Arstechnica runs on ads, theverge runs on ads, slashdot runs on ads, the register runs on ads, kotaku runs on ads, tech crunch run on ads. To name a few sites that might be popular here If those sites can't support themselves they'll more than likely disappear. If all those sites disappeared I feel like plenty of people (maybe not you but more people than not) would realize that they thought they wanted (zero disclose) lead to outcomes they didn't want I feel like Google is genuinely trying to do something positive here. Provide a way of those sites to still target ads, still check if an ad was effective, still try to check for bad actors making fake clicks, but also be practically un-attributable to a single user. Going through the actual specs, they really are trying to make it so you can't track and individual but sites can still function based on ads. Is it in Google own interest? Yes. But it's also in the interest of sites people want which means it's also in the interest of the people who want those sites. Apple on the other hand, would prefer you be tracked directly by having you download an app for each site where that app can track you way more than a browser with these features can track you.

ultimoo 3y ago

I stopped using Chrome and uninstalled it from all my devices a year ago. It was hard at first, but you get used to other browsers pretty quickly (took me two weeks). Safari on macOS works like a champ, and if I'm doing web development I switch to Firefox which has excellent developer tools (remember firebug?)

imiric 3y ago

All this focus on cookies and FLoC feels like smoke and mirrors from Google. Modern adtech can track users regardless if cookies are enabled or not, and whether they enable this new Chrome feature or not, via browser fingerprinting. They've been doing this for years. So this new "privacy sandbox" is a diversion to the public, and particularly to law makers, that signals "see, we care about user privacy". When in fact it ultimately makes no impact on their revenue. The public and law makers are barely starting to get an understanding about cookies, and there's a growing concern about them, so this is Google being proactive towards the blowback. Fingerprinting is much more complex to understand, and concern about it is so under the radar, that it will take many more years for the focus to catch up to these nefarious practices. The frog is being boiled[1], make no mistake about that. [1]: https://gazoche.xyz/posts/boiling-frog/ https://gazoche.xyz/posts/boiling-frog/

bad_user 3y ago
In the EU, as far as the ePrivacy Directive (cookie law) is concerned, fingerprinting is similar to using a tracking cookie, even if no cookies are actually involved. And as far as GDPR is concerned, fingerprinting can identify a visitor, it counts as personal data, therefore you need a legal basis for processing it. Not sure what the point you're trying to make is. Also, Google under Privacy Sandbox has been exploring ways to introduce a fingerprinting limitations and a budget. Which may as well be smoke and mirrors, but if you watch their marketing materials, they talk of fingerprinting in general.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  Yeah and the Legal Basis will be something like “we need to track users to improve our services”
  - troupo 3y ago
    They are trying to present that as legal basis, and it's not.
  - seanhunter 3y ago

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

Um, sweety, Chrome is the user-tracking ad platform.

ivansavz 3y ago

Key actionable info: to fix this, go to this URL: chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off the toggles on each of the three subpages. Alternatively, go to this URL https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ to fix this permanently.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Mozilla actively supports online ads and tracking. Without their partnership with Google, they could not continue as a going concern for very long. The deception is to make people believe that studying them as ad targets through their internet use can be "private". Many will believe this nonsense. Including regulators. "It's OK, folks. Privacy is preserved." Green light to keep on tracking, collecting data and serving ads. But the study of people's internet use to enable programmtic advertising _is_ the problem. There will be more ads. They will be more personal. The www will become even more annoying. Perhaps moreso than any other medium that has come before it. To Mozilla, there can be no www without advertising. The truth is that there can be no so-called "tech" companies, monopolisng intermediaries, without programmatic internet advertising. The www does not need it and the original www did not have it. First Mozilla partners with Yahoo. Then Google. Perhaps Meta will be next. Mozilla is no different than so-called "tech" companies in at least one regard: it cannot find a "business model" besides internet advertising. https://analyticsindiamag.com/despite-clashes-in-the-past-mozilla-partners-with-meta-on-interoperable-private-attribution/ https://analyticsindiamag.com/despite-clashes-in-the-past-mo... https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/ipa-the-meta-and-mozilla-attribution-framework-gains-traction-at-the-w3c-conference/ https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/ipa-the-meta-and-mozilla... https://www.admonsters.com/eletters/mozilla-and-metas-ipa-framework-gains-steam-at-w3c-conference-the-atlantic-pushes-into-tv-and-film/ https://www.admonsters.com/eletters/mozilla-and-metas-ipa-fr...
- whydoyoucare 3y ago
  Yeah, that is my understanding as well. While many promote Firefox as an alternative to Google Chrome, it simply lacks adequate proof that Firefox is any better than Chrome at tracking. Else, how does Mozilla survive?

tapatio 3y ago

"Do no evil". What a joke.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
"No, do evil!"

hooby 3y ago

I'm wondering about the "now". Didn't the very initial release of Chrome, many years ago, already create a unique, identifiable ID per user, and open a connection to phone home to Google servers (using that unique ID) on every single key-press and mouse click done anywhere in the browser?

hooby 3y ago

So, here's the question: When a large, publicly traded ad-company (that relies on collecting data and tracking users for most of it's income), creates a product that costs them quite a lot of money to make, and then gives that product to you for free... Do you expect them: A.) to be taking a loss on that product because they really just want to gift it to you from the goodness of their heart with no ulterior motives? B.) to actually have another way to make money from that product, which makes the whole endeavor financially worthwhile to them?

bjt 3y ago
It's a good point but also not that cut and dry. Chrome started as Webkit, which forked from KHTML, which was part of the very open source KDE. Has Google benefitted more from other people's open source contributions, or have we benefitted more from Google's open source contributions? The answer is not obvious to me.
- yunohn 3y ago
  Google impacts infinitely more lives than KDE does…
  - mcherm 3y ago
    I think your math is wrong. If (as was stated) Google's Chrome is based on KDE, than any user of Google Chrome is necessarily impacted by KDE. Meanwhile there could in theory be some user of KDE who has never used Chrome. So the set of lives affected by KDE is the same or larger than the set affected by Chrome.
    - Kwpolska 3y ago
      Your argument works only if we consider being affected by something to be very broadly applicable and unconditionally transitive. Someone who uses Chrome from version 100 onwards might be using something with traces of KDE code, but those traces are probably so small after all these years and forks that I wouldn't count them.

Timber-6539 3y ago

Not that am in support of Google's ad model or use Chrome with defaults but I would personally take this over 3rd party cookies given the choice.

hef19898 3y ago
How about, well, just neither?
- Timber-6539 3y ago
  Depends on your situation.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    How so? I still fail to see any benefit for me from being spied on by the likes of Google only to show me adds that, despite all the profilong they do, fail to have any relevance for me. And browser choice is still up to me. If Google and Chrome are mandatory for work, well, tough luck. But I do have the feeling that the enterprise versions are much less intrusive. And even if, I never do private stuff at my work machines and devices anyway.

ColinWright 3y ago

I use Firefox almost exclusively, and have done for years. But there are sites that only work with Chrome. So far I've always either: (a) Ignored them, or (b) Used an incognito window. But now, when I'm forced to use Chrome, I'm seriously looking at disguising my IP address, etc. But this is not my field. Would a VPN do what I need? Where are instructions that a n00b can follow? Every site I've found so far has either been: (i) Advertising; (ii) Assuming too much competence; (iii) Out of date, or (iv) Wrong. Clear, robust, and up-to-date advice welcome, as I'm sure it would be for many.

sah2ed 3y ago
> But this is not my field. > Would a VPN do what I need? Where are instructions that a n00b can follow? Never used them myself but lots of HN commenters think highly of the VPN services offered by Mullvad [0]. In fact, right now, Mullvad is currently on the HN frontpage [1], from a blog post by Tailscale. 0: https://mullvad.net/en https://mullvad.net/en 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37420053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37420053

Unfrozen0688 3y ago

Using Firefox or Brave mostly now, good to have another article to use against Chrome. Not to mention MS Edge...

mwinatschek 3y ago

I just want to say that I’m glad Apple does the exact opposite with Safari of what hostile things Google, Microsoft, and sometimes even Mozilla do to their browsers. Call me an Apple fanboy all day long but they proved for years that they care about speed, privacy, and even simplicity.

alufers 3y ago

I'm kind of torn on this. The general idea that the user's browser tracks him by itself instead of utilizing cookies or fingerprinting seems like a step up for privacy. Obviously the devil is in the details - Google controls that whole algorithm, and there obviously is a conflict of interest. But the alternative that the people who are against it are proposing is either to keep the status quo or kindly ask Google (and other ad companies) to stop existing, which is not gonna happen. They seem to ignore the fact that ad-tech is a huge industry and a large part of the internet relies on it. Basically the only way to make it go away would be to outlaw it. (Also so nobody accuses me as being pro-ads: I hate ads and tracking, but sort of in a way like I hate being sick. I can reduce my exposure to ads and tracking (adblock, not using certain apps, etc.), but I know that complaining about it won't make it go away)

throwitaway156 3y ago
This API wont remove or deprecate the already existing tracking methods, third party cookies can be disabled but alternative practices have been developed a good while ago (and new ones are actively being found). Advertisement networks _will_ find a way (avoiding fingerprinting is impossible, unless all browser companies decide to merge; exposing hardware to the web is the new trend for web technologies, and hardware can be extremely unique especially when combined with an IP yada yada) without depending on Google, their competitor in advertising, for their own product. Google, however, will hand your search history out to any website for free(?)
- izacus 3y ago
  The existence of this APIs will be very useful to argue that server-side data collection is not reasonable under GDPR anymore. I hope it gets implemented because it will give significant ammunition to us in Europe to make server-side behaviour tracking marked as unreasonable under GDPR provisions.
  - Silhouette 3y ago
    How would that work in practice? I'm not sure what kind of "server-side data collection" you're arguing against here.

0x49d1 3y ago

Vivaldi's team made a statement on the matter: https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-viva... Shortly: they disable the tracking forcibly, even if "someone" tries to enable it remotely or via flags.

jononomo 3y ago

I like the Brave browser, but it is based on Chromium -- how badly is it affected? Should I just restrict myself to Safari now? I don't really like Firefox for some reason.

emmanueloga_ 3y ago

I found about https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ from a web search. Has anyone here tried it or can recommend any other alternative firefox build without telemetry?

maxslch 3y ago

lol just updated my chrome before I saw this, I instantly got what it's about and didn't allow, why would I want any ads at all, I have a blocker, it doesn't matter, but that's sneaky from them and unhumane to push for that.

sizzle 3y ago

Beginning of the end