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> See the saga about Google and 3rd-party cookies This is a pet peeve of mine. I haven't seen a sane take on this anywhere. Getting rid of 3rd party cookies to

> See the saga about Google and 3rd-party cookies This is a pet peeve of mine. I haven't seen a sane take on this anywhere. Getting rid of 3rd party cookies to prevent tracking has been a priority for Google for many years. Everyone thinks they haven't done it because they hate privacy or something; nothing could be further from the truth. They have been blocked on disabling 3rd party cookies because of antitrust concerns coming from other ad companies who object to being blocked from tracking users.

shiomiru 2y ago
Antitrust concerns which wouldn't have had any weight if not for yet another tracking mechanism that Google had intended to add in place of third party cookies.[0] It's not because Google "hates privacy", it's because Google operates to generate profit, and it does so from targeted advertising. [0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...
- modeless 2y ago
  See, you have it backwards. It's exactly the opposite. FLoC etc were designed to mitigate the antitrust concerns by replacing 3rd party cookie tracking for the other ad companies, allowing 3rd party cookie deprecation to proceed. By blocking FLoC, activists made it impossible for Google to deprecate 3rd party cookies in Chrome, as that would guarantee a loss in antitrust court. Google themselves never needed FLoC for their own ads business. Their search and video ad businesses don't need 3rd party tracking to be successful. Google has the most first party data; users literally tell Google their intent directly by typing it into the search box. Advertising on 3rd party sites is a small minority of Google's revenue, and the part of that attributable to cross site tracking is even smaller. But Google had to provide something to replace cookie tracking for the other ad companies that don't have the first party data Google has. Those ad companies rely on 3rd party cookies to compete with Google. If Google blocked 3rd party cookies in Chrome with no replacement they would instantly be sued for leveraging their browser market share to kill their competition in the ads market, and they would lose big.

shiomiru 2y ago

Antitrust concerns which wouldn't have had any weight if not for yet another tracking mechanism that Google had intended to add in place of third party cookies.[0] It's not because Google "hates privacy", it's because Google operates to generate profit, and it does so from targeted advertising. [0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...

modeless 2y ago
See, you have it backwards. It's exactly the opposite. FLoC etc were designed to mitigate the antitrust concerns by replacing 3rd party cookie tracking for the other ad companies, allowing 3rd party cookie deprecation to proceed. By blocking FLoC, activists made it impossible for Google to deprecate 3rd party cookies in Chrome, as that would guarantee a loss in antitrust court. Google themselves never needed FLoC for their own ads business. Their search and video ad businesses don't need 3rd party tracking to be successful. Google has the most first party data; users literally tell Google their intent directly by typing it into the search box. Advertising on 3rd party sites is a small minority of Google's revenue, and the part of that attributable to cross site tracking is even smaller. But Google had to provide something to replace cookie tracking for the other ad companies that don't have the first party data Google has. Those ad companies rely on 3rd party cookies to compete with Google. If Google blocked 3rd party cookies in Chrome with no replacement they would instantly be sued for leveraging their browser market share to kill their competition in the ads market, and they would lose big.