5 ms·

Looks like they figured out a way to track you without 3rd party cookies and are looking to use their dominant position as a browser vendor to undercut competin

Looks like they figured out a way to track you without 3rd party cookies and are looking to use their dominant position as a browser vendor to undercut competing ad vendors who haven't figured it out yet. I wonder if those obnoxious Login with Google popups have anything to do with it.

riku_iki 3y ago
Wondering what UK authorities will say which are referenced in blog post.
danpalmer 3y ago
The spec for the targeting replacement is public, I believe it's called FLEDGE. Third party cookies uniquely identify one browser allowing direct targeting, whereas FLEDGE only allows general targeting of larger groups by topic as far as I understand it. I believe it's entirely distinct from Google accounts. Disclaimer, I work at Google on related things on the Android side, but I only have a layman's understanding of the Chrome side.
- bozhark 3y ago
  Why is this a chrome thing? Wouldn’t it be all search?
  - thorncorona 3y ago
    It requires cooperation from the browser to do generalized targeting.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    The browser, which doesn't need to be Chrome although that's the only implementation I've heard of, does local tracking. It then exposes APIs to ad networks to allow them to target based on that tracking. As far as I understand the "tracking" never leaves the device, and the "targeting" is fairly wide based on topics like "cars" or "holidays".
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      For ad click attribution Safari has their own API for this use case called PCM, private click measurement. https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-measurement-pcm/ https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas...
      - danpalmer 3y ago
        This is specifically for attribution, and seems to roughly mirror the native SKAdNetwork framework on iOS. Attribution is a distinct problem to targeting – also important, but as far as I can tell PCM/SKAdNetwork would not solve the same problem.
    - Sephr 3y ago
      Why would it be okay to let advertisers know you have an interest in cars? Seeing personally targeted ads affects your autonomy. I don't want to be influenced by ads on every website that are targeted by my socioeconomic status, such as the potential ability to afford a holiday outing or purchase a car inferred through interest in holidays and cars. Being able to differentiate on interests such as 'holidays' and 'cars' as compared to 'fast food' enables advertisers to sell the same product at different prices to different socioeconomic groups. This is bad for society.
- Sephr 3y ago
  How many people have you met in your life that have told you that they want to help advertisers serve them better personally targeted ads? If the answer is a very low number, then why is Privacy Sandbox on by default? In Chrome, none of the Privacy Sandbox APIs even respect the browser's built-in Do-Not-Track setting. Contextual ads are enough. Advertisers don't have an intrinsic right to optimally profit off my device hardware, and they should be thankful for whatever profit they do end up getting. Google's tech lead on Privacy Sandbox, Michael Kleber, says that "[…] limiting the web to contextual advertising solutions dramatically decreases the ability of web sites to fund themselves — for example, 52% less revenue for sites on average, and 62% less for news sites, according to https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa..., […]" 48% of current revenue is plenty. Privacy Sandbox is adtech greed forced onto users.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    (Entirely my personal opinion, but…) So you're sticking to third party tracking cookies? Sadly this is unlikely to be a false dichotomy, as we've already seen paywalls put up around adblockers, I expect to see the same for browsers without third party cookie support – I already have to mess with Safari on a regular basis to get websites to work because it doesn't accept them.
    - Sephr 3y ago
      You just ignored all of my questions and are now insinuating that I said something implying that I am "sticking to third party tracking cookies". In case you didn't get the drift from "Advertisers don't have an intrinsic right to optimally profit off my device hardware": I block third party cookies in Chrome and use other browsers that have third-party cookies blocked by default. If you're asking about how I use third party cookies myself in my own software: I maintain a popular consent manager used all across the internet. It doesn't use third-party cookies. We're actually planning to implement Privacy Sandbox regulation capabilities so that our customers can properly gate your APIs based on tracking consent and user privacy rights (since you don't respect your own browser privacy signals). If you're asking how I will react to a web with more paywalled ad-free content: Emotions ranging from indifferent to pleased, depending on the content source. Are you aware that your coworkers have frequently claimed that Privacy Sandbox by itself somehow "enhances" ad privacy, conflating the removal of third party cookies with the introduction of Privacy Sandbox? The notice has since been removed, but I'm still waiting (likely forever) for an issue to be addressed about these fraudulent claims[1]. Nobody wants Privacy Sandbox except advertisers. 1. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1431547 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143154...
- choppaface 3y ago
  The spec and impl might be public, but the actual market analysis that drove the change and how it will make non-Google ad targeting less competitive is not, and your employer will go scorched-earth to hide whatever they can from public inquiry just as they’ve done in current trials e.g. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/google-fights-to-hide-embarrassing-but-not-confidential-doj-trial-exhibit/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/google-fights-to... If you work on Android maybe you can do a 20% project where you let users completely opt out of motion-based user fingerprinting even when airplane mode is on https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/7811918/google-is-tracking-you-even-with-airplane-mode-turned-on/amp/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/7811918/google-is-tracking-you... Or even a change to let Android users get a percentage of the profits garnered from Google’s fingerprinting of them.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Post from April, FLEDGE is renamed to Protected Audience API. https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/news/protected-audience-api-our-new-name-for-fledge https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/news/protected-audienc... Docs for Protected Audience API: https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/protected-audience https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/prot... It feels like there's a bunch more pieces to the puzzle too. There's Topic API, which by itself only tells a site more about users, but does so in a supposedly privacy preserving way. There's dozens of efforts listed on https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/protected-audience-api/feature-status https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/prot... , mostly slated for 2023 & seemingly not updated in a while (with abundant broken links too). It's a bit wild that third party cookies are deprecated even though it seems like then promised fair privacy preserving replacement for ads is maybe still being built?
new_user_final 3y ago
[flagged]
choppaface 3y ago
The obnoxious Google Login popups are designed to create lift for Google auth over e.g. Facebook, Microsoft, or even per-site accounts. While logged-in helps them track you, Google already has you through your phone or Google Analytics. Google Plus was where they launched the TOS and formally started cookie-joining across all their platforms.
donatzsky 3y ago
This has nothing to do with the Google Login pop-up. Incidentally, it used to be that you could turn them off in your Google account settings, and the option is still there, but it seems to be broken since a while now. At least for me.

riku_iki 3y ago

Wondering what UK authorities will say which are referenced in blog post.

danpalmer 3y ago

The spec for the targeting replacement is public, I believe it's called FLEDGE. Third party cookies uniquely identify one browser allowing direct targeting, whereas FLEDGE only allows general targeting of larger groups by topic as far as I understand it. I believe it's entirely distinct from Google accounts. Disclaimer, I work at Google on related things on the Android side, but I only have a layman's understanding of the Chrome side.

bozhark 3y ago
Why is this a chrome thing? Wouldn’t it be all search?
- thorncorona 3y ago
  It requires cooperation from the browser to do generalized targeting.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  The browser, which doesn't need to be Chrome although that's the only implementation I've heard of, does local tracking. It then exposes APIs to ad networks to allow them to target based on that tracking. As far as I understand the "tracking" never leaves the device, and the "targeting" is fairly wide based on topics like "cars" or "holidays".
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    For ad click attribution Safari has their own API for this use case called PCM, private click measurement. https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-measurement-pcm/ https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas...
    - danpalmer 3y ago
      This is specifically for attribution, and seems to roughly mirror the native SKAdNetwork framework on iOS. Attribution is a distinct problem to targeting – also important, but as far as I can tell PCM/SKAdNetwork would not solve the same problem.
  - Sephr 3y ago
    Why would it be okay to let advertisers know you have an interest in cars? Seeing personally targeted ads affects your autonomy. I don't want to be influenced by ads on every website that are targeted by my socioeconomic status, such as the potential ability to afford a holiday outing or purchase a car inferred through interest in holidays and cars. Being able to differentiate on interests such as 'holidays' and 'cars' as compared to 'fast food' enables advertisers to sell the same product at different prices to different socioeconomic groups. This is bad for society.
Sephr 3y ago
How many people have you met in your life that have told you that they want to help advertisers serve them better personally targeted ads? If the answer is a very low number, then why is Privacy Sandbox on by default? In Chrome, none of the Privacy Sandbox APIs even respect the browser's built-in Do-Not-Track setting. Contextual ads are enough. Advertisers don't have an intrinsic right to optimally profit off my device hardware, and they should be thankful for whatever profit they do end up getting. Google's tech lead on Privacy Sandbox, Michael Kleber, says that "[…] limiting the web to contextual advertising solutions dramatically decreases the ability of web sites to fund themselves — for example, 52% less revenue for sites on average, and 62% less for news sites, according to https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third-pa..., […]" 48% of current revenue is plenty. Privacy Sandbox is adtech greed forced onto users.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  (Entirely my personal opinion, but…) So you're sticking to third party tracking cookies? Sadly this is unlikely to be a false dichotomy, as we've already seen paywalls put up around adblockers, I expect to see the same for browsers without third party cookie support – I already have to mess with Safari on a regular basis to get websites to work because it doesn't accept them.
  - Sephr 3y ago
    You just ignored all of my questions and are now insinuating that I said something implying that I am "sticking to third party tracking cookies". In case you didn't get the drift from "Advertisers don't have an intrinsic right to optimally profit off my device hardware": I block third party cookies in Chrome and use other browsers that have third-party cookies blocked by default. If you're asking about how I use third party cookies myself in my own software: I maintain a popular consent manager used all across the internet. It doesn't use third-party cookies. We're actually planning to implement Privacy Sandbox regulation capabilities so that our customers can properly gate your APIs based on tracking consent and user privacy rights (since you don't respect your own browser privacy signals). If you're asking how I will react to a web with more paywalled ad-free content: Emotions ranging from indifferent to pleased, depending on the content source. Are you aware that your coworkers have frequently claimed that Privacy Sandbox by itself somehow "enhances" ad privacy, conflating the removal of third party cookies with the introduction of Privacy Sandbox? The notice has since been removed, but I'm still waiting (likely forever) for an issue to be addressed about these fraudulent claims[1]. Nobody wants Privacy Sandbox except advertisers. 1. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1431547 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143154...
choppaface 3y ago
The spec and impl might be public, but the actual market analysis that drove the change and how it will make non-Google ad targeting less competitive is not, and your employer will go scorched-earth to hide whatever they can from public inquiry just as they’ve done in current trials e.g. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/google-fights-to-hide-embarrassing-but-not-confidential-doj-trial-exhibit/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/google-fights-to... If you work on Android maybe you can do a 20% project where you let users completely opt out of motion-based user fingerprinting even when airplane mode is on https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/7811918/google-is-tracking-you-even-with-airplane-mode-turned-on/amp/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/7811918/google-is-tracking-you... Or even a change to let Android users get a percentage of the profits garnered from Google’s fingerprinting of them.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Post from April, FLEDGE is renamed to Protected Audience API. https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/news/protected-audience-api-our-new-name-for-fledge https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/news/protected-audienc... Docs for Protected Audience API: https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/protected-audience https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/prot... It feels like there's a bunch more pieces to the puzzle too. There's Topic API, which by itself only tells a site more about users, but does so in a supposedly privacy preserving way. There's dozens of efforts listed on https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/protected-audience-api/feature-status https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/prot... , mostly slated for 2023 & seemingly not updated in a while (with abundant broken links too). It's a bit wild that third party cookies are deprecated even though it seems like then promised fair privacy preserving replacement for ads is maybe still being built?

new_user_final 3y ago

[flagged]

choppaface 3y ago

The obnoxious Google Login popups are designed to create lift for Google auth over e.g. Facebook, Microsoft, or even per-site accounts. While logged-in helps them track you, Google already has you through your phone or Google Analytics. Google Plus was where they launched the TOS and formally started cookie-joining across all their platforms.

donatzsky 3y ago

This has nothing to do with the Google Login pop-up. Incidentally, it used to be that you could turn them off in your Google account settings, and the option is still there, but it seems to be broken since a while now. At least for me.