Let me guess, everything about "Privacy Sandbox" is meaningless when the company that proposes it also holds a major stronghold on the web thanks to Google Analytics, Google SSO, etc. Google themselves will likely barely be impacted (and why should we expect otherwise, google is not going to shoot themselves in the foot)
> When faced with a tradeoff, we will typically prioritize user benefits over preserving current website practices. We believe that that is the role of a web browser, also known as the user agent.
Google doesn't use webkit any more if that's what you're referring to.
But absolutely Google doesn't believe that. Even if the Chromium team truly believed in privacy (and their track record suggests otherwise), there still is a huge conflict of interest and daddy Google is not gonna let them interfere with their revenue.
That I know, but it is important the differences of a company funded by ads and the ones that are not.
Especially given this right at the top:
> Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. And to anyone suggesting that a paid model will just surface, I don't really want to live in a world where only the rich have access to tools as useful as Maps, Translate or Youtube.
And how do you suggest a service such as Maps or Youtube stay free? Do you realize the amount of money that goes into maintaining those services? Would you be okay to returning to using paper maps? Or do you propose the rich get richer by having better tools and the poor are stuck with primitive tools?
How has openstreetmap.org remained free, if it's impossible to do without ads? Or torrents? Or GitHub? Or webarchive? Or any of the millions of other dual-licensed services or volunteer run services?
It will still get done, even without ads. The internet has, oddly enough, been the one to prove that to be the rule, not the exception.
I haven't tried it yet, but Peertube looks like an interesting alternative to Youtube. Mastadon and Matrix are similar exciting projects too. I host a Matrix instance that I and my extended family use to keep in touch, and we can seamlessly interoperate with anyone on any other Matrix instance. A few kinks to work out still (I wish the server software was way less bloated) but overall I think it's a really promising approach.
No it is not, Google is just proposing extra protections around existing mechanisms. That will continue to likely allow google nearly unlimited access to data.
That's not how I read it. To me, it just sounded like trying to standardize all the different approaches everyone is using, so we don't end up with a mess like the User-Agent field currently is, because everyone tries their own hack on top of hack on top of hack trying to play a cat and mouse game.
Trying to standardize is already what Mozilla and Apple (by openly stating their proposal was based on Mozilla) attempting to do.
The only thing Google is doing by proposing this is to attempt to remove or lower the impact on them.
Considering this in the beginning:
>Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
> They proposed an option for allowing ads without them being a privacy nightmare.
Non-personalized ads won't be lucrative enough to fund the web. Let's stop this equivocation. When people say that preventing tracking will kill advertising, they mean that it'll kill personalized advertising. When you respond to these concerns by pointing out that non-personalized advertising would still be possible, you're using this one word, "advertising", to refer to a different concept. Word games make for bad arguments.
How is showing advertisements for your product not advertising? TV advertisements don't monitor every show I watch and channel I surf to, but they are still called advertisements.
You don't need to sniff my metaphorical underwear to serve me advertisements, and the definition of advertisement surely doesn't depend upon harvesting user data.
> How is showing advertisements for your product not advertising?
Quoting my own post, which you either didn't read or didn't understand: when people say that preventing tracking will kill advertising, they mean that it'll kill personalized advertising.
> You don't need to sniff my metaphorical underwear to serve me advertisement
Without personalization, ads aren't profitable enough to fund free-to-use web services.
> definition of advertisement
Nobody is talking about the definition of advertisement.
There are a lot of good aguments that the bad brought by the internet out weighs the good.
I also don't think all the nice tools you described would go away. People would still provide these services for free, although it would be different people than today.
"Based on an analysis of a randomly selected fraction of traffic on each of the 500 largest Google Ad Manager publishers globally over the last three months, we evaluated how the presence of a cookie affected programmatic revenue. Traffic for which there was no cookie present yielded an average of 52 percent less revenue for the publisher than traffic for which there was a cookie present."
(Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself)
Wouldn't this data be tainted by the fact that those deleting your cookies are the sort of people who actively adblock or protect their privacy, and hence are naturally unlikely to click on ads?
If the default for everyone was to not target users, the actual revenue value would probably be a wash, because ad targeting is useless.
Perhaps, but many are using other privacy protection methods. Like I use Privacy Badger, which aims to largely leave ads but kill tracking cookies. I don't ever click ads though, so people like me are who fill out much of the "no cookie" market.
If everyone didn't have user tracking, the metrics on the effectiveness of stalking everyone would be very different.
Or perhaps without cookies, only lower value ads bid? There are a lot of factors and it's not clear how they interact or if they'd be relevant if cookies didn't exist for any user.
Google AdSense started off as contextual. Maybe the drop is so significant in this study because Google's ad network no longer knows how to be contextual and is crappy without tracking.
The half of the internet that would collapse without ads is the half people aren’t willing to pay for, and that is expensive to keep up. So, what would be left would look more like a library, and a bunch of paid publications and services.
I am not rich but I would pay a monthly subscription for a Google-like service that isnt as crippled or now politically inclined as Google is.
A service that gives me the same results as any other customer. If I want my results to be bubbled may it be by tags I choose such as "Programmer" bubble or "Medical Professional" and maybe even Public Libraries and schools could pay for access to such engines. If I remember correctly many schools pay for curated search engines as it is.
I would also pay money for a solid social network and / or IM service. If I dont see certain people on it even better. My favorite thing about the internet is meeting new people anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have the option between a free and a paid model, but that's beside the point, which is that there will always be some people who can't afford the paid one, and for them, access to these tools far outweighs whatever privacy implication there is.
Furthermore, we all enjoy our accurate and free traffic predictions every day, but you do realize that it wouldn't be possible without user data, right?
Why would you have to be rich? If something can be supported by ads, it can be supported by a less than a penny from each user. You don't have to be rich to afford a penny.
And I stated this in a separate child content, but the internet has proven repeatedly that services can be provided ad-free. No ads anywhere. They're either supported by donations, a subset of users who pay for advanced features, or run by volunteers on their own dime.
Listing three Google properties supposedly without competitors (which they do) does not prove that it's impossible (in fact, the hundreds and thousands of other web properties actually prove that ad-unsupported services can and do thrive).
Google’s annual revenue is $136b (5/6th is from ads) and there are ~2.5 billion active android users. So, google would still be wildly profitable if they charged each user $3.7 a month, and eliminated their ads division.
This ignores revenue from iOS users, and the cost savings from shutting down their ads and tracking businesses.
> Except without advertising half of the internet collapses.
This is a lie adtech industry tries to spread, but it was never true. Among a top couple of million of websites almost none are funded through adtech, as it doesn't pay much to websites at all. Adtech first and foremost is about making money for advertising companies, on all websites it can convince to join in aggregate, and for a couple of big platforms, but definitely not about supporting websites.
If the EC or DoJ forced a spin-off of Chrome from Google it would fix that incentive right away. Chrome would be in a position to extract a large TAC payment to be the default search engine (like Apple) and they could realistically focus on being the best browser for privacy.
> Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
Notice how arrogant Google sounds on this sentence here. This is like saying: "Hey, you guys can create whatever adblocking technology you want, without Google's blessing, that shit will never take off. We own the web."
Any update on the whole adblock thing that was popular here a little bit ago, with them deprecating the ability to drop web requests? Seems kinda paramount to this initiative.
As expected, it was pretty overblown. Realistically though we won't really know for another year or two. The specs keep on changing, and even if it's finalized, it won't be enforced for a long while.
>Technology that publishers and advertisers use to make advertising even more relevant to people is now being used far beyond its original design intent - to a point where some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy.
The whole thing reads like Google is just discovering the abuse that they themselves have perpetuated and bred into a real monster.
> Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
Haha, nice, blame it on the ones that actually try.
> First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting.
Fingerprinting was used in addition to cookies. Banning 3rd party cookies is just a first step.
> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web.
Here's the problem. Google only wants a solution if it works with it's current business model, which is ads. Trusting Google to protect our privacy is like trusting a burglar to protect your home whilst you're away.
Want to not be tracked ? Install Firefox or Safari, turn on ad blockers, use a different browser for Facebook (or use Facebook Container on Firefox), and refuse any "Consent approvals" when you visit a website. Also, advocate for laws like the GDPR (it has made privacy a bigger concerns for companies in the EU).
Why was this downvoted? Save the fact that you just shouldn't use Facebook at all, I think this is great comment. It actually references text from the post, unlike many of the other comments.
It must have been a few Google bots...
I especially like this text they wrote: "attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences"
Unintended consequences? Oh no! Google's evil business model is being messed with!!!
> large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting
The safest assumption is that fingerprinting is and will be used regardless of whether local storages (of which cookies is one flavor) are forbidden -- these are not mutually exclusive.
I’ve always enabled fingerprint-blocking, first with extensions, now in the browser. The only places I had problems logging in are some very few online shops. Never a bank, and I had a bank with a password limit of 6 characters (about 5 years ago)
I closed my accounts with Chase and Citi because I kept getting locked out of my accounts for suspicious activity. Disabling PIA VPN helped but I never could figure out what else about me trying to avoid being tracked looked suspicious.
Apparently they take a 'only criminals would clear cookies' approach.
this statement is fraudulent and Justin Schuh should be embarrassed to have it associated with his name. i'm tired of being lied to about this company's obviously fake "values".
> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web.
I think you could argue that targeted advertisement has jeopardized the future of the vibrant web.
This is just their ordinary dishonesty. When Google wants to actually be fraudulent they do it the Google way, they hire thousands of genius engineers to work on their ad software and then have none of them complete the endpoints for refunds and then have all of them ignore it, even willfully, until $75 million is stolen and a judge is sniffing around... twenty years later.
The question is, does that $75 million of fraud include the twenty years of missing banned-Adsense-account revenue Google paid $11m to conceal what they do with... or is that a distinct other fraud.
At the end of the day, Google has a fundamental crisis. Their entire business depends on your lack of privacy from them. They would be happy to help keep you private from everyone else but they definitely need to invade your privacy to keep their business alive.
What's the exact age range you're looking for? 13 years is too old, its high school aged, but 3-5 years is too young? So we're looking what, only for products released from '07-'12?
I wonder if they could survive off of search page ads and website contextual ads? No user targeted ads. If they could, they could squash the invasive marketing advertisers with lobbying for privacy policy and then regain a total monopoly as no other tracking adtech is viable anymore.
I personally believe fingerprinting should be illegal, and that any company that relies on it is inherently unethical. I think Google could survive without it.
I am by no means a Google fan either, just recognizing they have some power here and that fighting for ethical policy might actually be a good business move.
Contextual ads would be perfectly fine and unlikely to be any less relevant than user targeted ads. However, any ad company can easily offer this. Google's raisin-d'etre is that they track everyone on the Internet, and that they claim by doing so, can offer the best ads. If they admit that's not true, you might as well go with any other ad company.
In my read of the situation, Google's ads dominate because of their network. Other ad suppliers can't put their ads into Google search results, and it would be hard to build a network of display advertisers as big as Google's.
I wouldn't mind a shake up in the display network side of things. "Carbon" ad network is a great example of what can come out of a niche, well managed ad network and people choose them because they are present where the eyeballs for their demographic are. Like putting motor oil adverts on a racetrack. You don't have to track people around for those types of networks to work.
Oh yeah, there were multiple networks like Carbon, The Deck, etc. The only kind that doesn't suck.
It's weird that tracking-based ads have taken over. Logically, contextual makes a lot more sense. But apparently statistical data is telling ad companies that tracking is worth it :(
"Some ideas include new approaches to ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users, but user data shared with websites and advertisers would be minimized by anonymously aggregating user information, and keeping much more user information on-device only. Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users’ expectations of privacy."
These ideas don't work together Google. First, I don't want to see ads at all to lookup information. Encyclopedias didn't have advertisements in their Table of Contents. Second, you can't show relevant ads for users while keeping user data anonymous, especially when your algorithms and methods of doing so are closed-source.
This reads as "save the cookies" to me. From a company who specializes in tracking of all forms including location from our phones and parsing all of our emails to enumerate our recent shopping orders on 3rd party sites.
What if websites just return to contextual ads and proper opt-in consumer studies (as traditional groups like nielson still do) instead of tracking everything their users do online and offline for aggressive targeting?
It doesn't matter. That's the beautiful thing about being the owner of Chrome, which kind of is "the web" now. Open specs and industry standards are basically what you propose and accept. And you get the data anyway regardless of these standards since you own the OS (Android), the browser (Chrome), and the search engine. So anyone else getting less data equals you being ahead of all others even more equals your risk of being disrupted is even lower.
Yet they don't mention Android, where the security is so lax you can also be fingerprinted and data sent to a remote server without you ever knowing, where Chrome on Android doesn't even allow you to use ad blocking tools?
This is a weak attempt at showing how tracking Google has been a part of and enabled is not being accepted by certain vendors anymore.
Let's build a cross OS, cross browser and cross platform set of standards, not just for the web but computing as a whole.
Also, didn't Google propose cutting the web manifest to prevent tools like uBlock from working as well? Not sure what's going on with this...
Personally, I don't trust the fox (Google) to guard the hen house (my privacy). Sure, they might keep other foxes away, but I'll still be short a few hens at the end of the day.
The chromium blog entry mentions a browser that blocks cookies. Which browser are they referring to?
> We’ve seen this recently in response to the actions that other browsers have taken to block cookies - new techniques are emerging that are not transparent to the user, such as fingerprinting.
Firefox allows control over cookies, and there are a number of extensions which serve this function as well. Does Chrome not give an option re cookies?
It's (almost) funny to see how Google "reframe" the concept of privacy to preserve its business model !!!
- "large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting"... so it means: one way or another, it's OK to gather as much information as possible to show relevant (targeted and weel paid) ads. But there are good ways (cookies) and bad ways (fingerprinting).
- "blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding". And what about delivering "standard" ads ???? Newspapers have shown non-targeted ads for years and nobody complained about that (I mean... except marketers maybe). If publishers stopped relying on targeted ads, maybe they may at last find some really new business model (like shared subscription) instead of just being lazy, using Google/Facebook products ?
- "If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone", meaning...? Oh... less things to show on google search engine and with AMP. As Google is not producing content by itself but using (stealing?) content produced by others, it's quite understandable that their bottom line is tied up to the content publishers providing free content. Actually, maybe Google should pay content provider to be able to include it in their serach engine ? (ok... link the link tax)
It seems to me that Google doesn't understand that users DON'T WANT TO BE TRACKED AT ALL. It has gone too creepy for years. It's not a matter of being tracked by one trick or another, it's not been tracked AT ALL.
But, admitting this would mean the end of GoogleAds. And Google seem to has lost any creativity to find new solutions to replace that product that users can't bear anymore. Sad... "do no Evil" if really gone forever :-(
You're right. But, Google does understand that their users don't want to be tracked. They just don't care.
The real solution is to "Get off Google". If everyone reading this did that, would it impact them? No, they would be fine. But I think it's better to do something rather than nothing.
This seems like a cop-out to me. “What can I, as one person do? Just don’t bother since the impact is tiny.”
I think people leave out the word “only” in statements like yours. Systemic problems can’t be solved with only individual action but the actions of many individuals can very much set examples, serve as encouragement to others, shift norms, and make the political space for regulated or coordinated action more available.
We should not exempt ourselves from individual action, especially when it is inconvenient, simply because our small change won’t single-handedly solve the whole problem. This goes for browsers, “free” email, privacy, and environmental impact.
True. Customer boycott have worked in the past. DELETEUBER campaign was quite a big PR nightmare for Uber and this could be measured in their market share vs Lyft.
Same from buying power. You can either buy from small business and make a difference for a family. Or you can keep shopping at big box stores. Sure it feels like a small impact, but this isn't small at all for the small business. Those things add up.
The problems were created because incentives aligned for people to make decisions that lead to the problem. The only way to revert it is to change the incentives. And that can't be done by just me or you.
Yes, but you aren't going to get enough people to change their decisions to have an impact without changing their incentives.
Right now people are incentivized to use these "free" services because they feel like that's what is in their best interest. And to be honest, they are probably right in the current state of the world. I would be significantly worse off if I refused to use any Google services. I literally wouldn't be able to do my current job.
Making any type of change isn't going to come from us, but from regulators who force change.
This conversation was started about addressing the systematic problem of Google tracking users despite their wishes. You responded saying that could be solved through individual action. Now you are changing the topic to be about Google tracking you.
They were created by the ascribe of a few powerful individuals (not in some conspiratorial way, I just mean the actions of a few company heads / marketing gurus etc), not by the individual actions of some billions of users. They will have to be dismantled the same way.
No. They were created by the individual actions of some billinos of users who (like me) subcribed to those problems (not regarded as such at the time) due to - i will agree - the actions of a few company heads / marketing gurus. But just as nobody was pointing a gun to my head at the time, nobody is pointing a gun to my head now: "Thank you for your services, I think I 'll be leaving now"
True, but it is not the way the problem was created. It is a part, but nothing compared to the conscious choice of installing chrome or signing up for gmail etc. The massive adoption of google products was not achieved the way you describe. To be clear, i agree with you. What you describe, is true and indicative of the situation. But I just want to point that individual action can solve the problem just as it was the main drive that created it
I still use some Google products because it's far too inconvenient to get rid of them (notably, Android and YouTube), but I got rid of pretty much anything else that "normal people" rely on: search, maps, Chrome (or any Chromium-based browser), analytics, calendar, drive, assistant, Gmail etc.
Part of the problem is that tracking at scale really does add convenience (automatic home to work detection, traffic pattern detection, real-time routing around events.) But then using that information for other purposes (advertising your nearest fast food restaurant) isn't seen by users as compelling compared to the user's purpose of sharing that information. That's one reason why GDPR and its enforcement has been so weighted towards the _purposes_ of data collection and enforcing adherence to stated purposes.
The problem, of course, is that incentives are misaligned and the company's purpose in collection and use is often different from the user's purpose. And the laws are still written to the service provider's purpose not the users' purpose. Its left to the company to align them.
I use Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps. Each has a perceptibly different balancing of those purposes.
OSM with a good theme is pretty good... But it's the other features people use Google Maps for. If you use Android, you might want to try Locus, it can do online and offline maps, online routing from multiple providers and a ton of other stuff.
Where by "Internet" I mean "running 3rd party code talking back to a server over a global network". One way is going back to the original WWW design of hyperlinked documents, removing cookies and javascript altogether. Tracking becomes limited to the set of hyperlinked documents accessed, which could be proxied by a 3rd party for anonymization purposes. However, there are a few downsides.
* No authentication to remote servers. Forget web email, shopping or banking. On the plus side, forget social media as well.
> One way is going back to the original WWW design of hyperlinked documents, removing cookies and javascript altogether.
While it doesn't seem likely to be viable even for a single person (primarily because of the government and banking services), it sounds rather nice to me, and such a sentiment pops up here and there.
> No authentication to remote servers.
No certain types of custom authentication, but standard HTTP authentication doesn't require executing freshly loaded code. Even custom forms-based authentication doesn't require to do that, or to use cookies.
> No business model for content publishers.
This is probably meant to be exaggerated; surely there are content publisher business models not reliant on JS-powered advertisement (e.g., subscriptions, tracking-free advertisements, donations, perhaps merchandise).
> No rich web UIs, for example maps.
I find this example rather interesting: it's a common and old application of pushing the limits of web browsers, and a seemingly common example of the need to do so (perhaps because maps are useful to many people, and the need in a specialized UI for those is hardly controversial). But it also seems quite sensible to me to use a dedicated program (which doesn't run on top of a web browser, that is) for mapping.
Thank you. The business model is likely faulty reasoning by my part: Observe that in current world the most effective business model is advertisement, out-competing alternatives, then incorrectly concluding it is the best in all possible worlds.
I think that’s an unfair reading of the blog post. They seem to suggest that advertisers can do targeting client side, using cookies, and without sending the cookies out. There are issues with this of course (enforcement, bandwidth), but it sound like a good compromise.
There is enforcement though. I think the idea is that once a standard for privacy-respecting ad personalization is in place, Google will be free to start taking more aggressive measures towards blocking more invasive tracking systems (like cookies and fingerprinting) without hurting their own advertising business.
If people want fewer ads and tracking then more content will be paywalled. This is bad for a few reasons. For one, people who can't afford to pay their way thru paywalls go get their news from Facebook or sources backed by people like the Kochs or Breitbart.
Awesome, we killed advertising and fixed privacy but now what have we gained? A walled-garden on the truth?
The next evolution of the internet is most probably the internet of value. Google is in the position to push this and be the largest player in that new internet but reading their ideas on how to fix the current internet I don't think they are ready for real change.
I would like to suggest a great talk about this topic from David Schwartz.
https://youtu.be/FUtlTgWyX5w?t=5223 Use this URL for the web monetization part he come straight to the point. Whats broken, why and how to fix it in less than 2 minutes. He then explains more technically how the internet of value can/is be created. Very interesting for anyone who know the basic about IP and the different layer that made our internet really usable.
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Well, an initiative for other browsers, publishers, and their advertising partners to protect adtech is definitely not about privacy.
Makes me think of this quote from the webkit policy https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/ :
> When faced with a tradeoff, we will typically prioritize user benefits over preserving current website practices. We believe that that is the role of a web browser, also known as the user agent.
Google clearly does not believe that.
But absolutely Google doesn't believe that. Even if the Chromium team truly believed in privacy (and their track record suggests otherwise), there still is a huge conflict of interest and daddy Google is not gonna let them interfere with their revenue.
Especially given this right at the top:
> Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
That's rich coming from the makers of Chrome...
For example, it’d end domain squatting. (EDIT: Guess not!)
It will still get done, even without ads. The internet has, oddly enough, been the one to prove that to be the rule, not the exception.
My instance is completely ad-free, I might add.
It has (had?) 80% market share in car navigation systems, and makes money by charging car manufacturers for its product:
https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/03/why-3-car-giants-just-bou...
Apple maps is similar: you pay for the phone, and map updates are free. Android could be the same (if google charged for the OS).
Maps isn't fully free; they charge exorbitantly for the API. The freemium model works for e.g. Dropbox and Vimeo without needing to show ads.
They proposed an option for allowing ads without them being a privacy nightmare.
Apple's plan is a complete departure from current setups. https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...
I don't really know if its viable, but its something.
The only thing Google is doing by proposing this is to attempt to remove or lower the impact on them.
Considering this in the beginning:
>Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
Non-personalized ads won't be lucrative enough to fund the web. Let's stop this equivocation. When people say that preventing tracking will kill advertising, they mean that it'll kill personalized advertising. When you respond to these concerns by pointing out that non-personalized advertising would still be possible, you're using this one word, "advertising", to refer to a different concept. Word games make for bad arguments.
You don't need to sniff my metaphorical underwear to serve me advertisements, and the definition of advertisement surely doesn't depend upon harvesting user data.
Quoting my own post, which you either didn't read or didn't understand: when people say that preventing tracking will kill advertising, they mean that it'll kill personalized advertising.
> You don't need to sniff my metaphorical underwear to serve me advertisement
Without personalization, ads aren't profitable enough to fund free-to-use web services.
> definition of advertisement
Nobody is talking about the definition of advertisement.
>Without personalization, ads aren't profitable enough to fund free-to-use web services.
I'll take a citation with that, please.
Yes they will. They will be plenty lucrative. Banner ads work fine.
Non-personalized ads funded TV and radio for decades.
Non-personalized ads make about half as much money: https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency... Whether this is enough to fund the web is debatable.
(Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself)
Come on man. Are you saying the web wouldn't exist if ads had just happened to be 50% as profitable?
Is that a bad thing ??
There are a lot of good aguments that the bad brought by the internet out weighs the good.
I also don't think all the nice tools you described would go away. People would still provide these services for free, although it would be different people than today.
Citation needed.
You can still run ads without knowing anything about the user. They will be less targeted and less profitable, but you can still use them.
Source? Last I heard, targeted advertising isn’t more profitable.
Specifically, about half as profitable: https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency...
"Based on an analysis of a randomly selected fraction of traffic on each of the 500 largest Google Ad Manager publishers globally over the last three months, we evaluated how the presence of a cookie affected programmatic revenue. Traffic for which there was no cookie present yielded an average of 52 percent less revenue for the publisher than traffic for which there was a cookie present."
(Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself)
If the default for everyone was to not target users, the actual revenue value would probably be a wash, because ad targeting is useless.
If everyone didn't have user tracking, the metrics on the effectiveness of stalking everyone would be very different.
This seems like a net win to me.
A service that gives me the same results as any other customer. If I want my results to be bubbled may it be by tags I choose such as "Programmer" bubble or "Medical Professional" and maybe even Public Libraries and schools could pay for access to such engines. If I remember correctly many schools pay for curated search engines as it is.
I would also pay money for a solid social network and / or IM service. If I dont see certain people on it even better. My favorite thing about the internet is meeting new people anyway.
Furthermore, we all enjoy our accurate and free traffic predictions every day, but you do realize that it wouldn't be possible without user data, right?
And I stated this in a separate child content, but the internet has proven repeatedly that services can be provided ad-free. No ads anywhere. They're either supported by donations, a subset of users who pay for advanced features, or run by volunteers on their own dime.
Listing three Google properties supposedly without competitors (which they do) does not prove that it's impossible (in fact, the hundreds and thousands of other web properties actually prove that ad-unsupported services can and do thrive).
EDIT: Reworded a few poorly phrased sentences.
This ignores revenue from iOS users, and the cost savings from shutting down their ads and tracking businesses.
This is a lie adtech industry tries to spread, but it was never true. Among a top couple of million of websites almost none are funded through adtech, as it doesn't pay much to websites at all. Adtech first and foremost is about making money for advertising companies, on all websites it can convince to join in aggregate, and for a couple of big platforms, but definitely not about supporting websites.
The idea that "half the internet would collapse" doesn't seem to be backed by historical precedence.
Content targeting worked for a century just fine.
Notice how arrogant Google sounds on this sentence here. This is like saying: "Hey, you guys can create whatever adblocking technology you want, without Google's blessing, that shit will never take off. We own the web."
The whole thing reads like Google is just discovering the abuse that they themselves have perpetuated and bred into a real monster.
But, a noble goal nonetheless.
Haha, nice, blame it on the ones that actually try.
> First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting.
Fingerprinting was used in addition to cookies. Banning 3rd party cookies is just a first step.
> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web.
Here's the problem. Google only wants a solution if it works with it's current business model, which is ads. Trusting Google to protect our privacy is like trusting a burglar to protect your home whilst you're away.
Want to not be tracked ? Install Firefox or Safari, turn on ad blockers, use a different browser for Facebook (or use Facebook Container on Firefox), and refuse any "Consent approvals" when you visit a website. Also, advocate for laws like the GDPR (it has made privacy a bigger concerns for companies in the EU).
It must have been a few Google bots...
I especially like this text they wrote: "attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences"
Unintended consequences? Oh no! Google's evil business model is being messed with!!!
The safest assumption is that fingerprinting is and will be used regardless of whether local storages (of which cookies is one flavor) are forbidden -- these are not mutually exclusive.
Clearly information security is their forte /s
Apparently they take a 'only criminals would clear cookies' approach.
Still not an absolute one should be unequivocally confident in, but risk management types for a major bank... probably don't care.
this statement is fraudulent and Justin Schuh should be embarrassed to have it associated with his name. i'm tired of being lied to about this company's obviously fake "values".
Google is an antonym to Privacy.
> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web.
I think you could argue that targeted advertisement has jeopardized the future of the vibrant web.
This Google piece somehow tops Mark Zuckerberg's 3000 word drabby drivel: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-foc...
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-emails-adtrader-lawsu...
The question is, does that $75 million of fraud include the twenty years of missing banned-Adsense-account revenue Google paid $11m to conceal what they do with... or is that a distinct other fraud.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/
He said privacy is paramount.
He did not imply that protecting/safeguarding/respecting privacy is paramount.
Maybe he means to say that invading/selling/violating privacy is paramount.
Drive fits the bill.
I personally believe fingerprinting should be illegal, and that any company that relies on it is inherently unethical. I think Google could survive without it.
I am by no means a Google fan either, just recognizing they have some power here and that fighting for ethical policy might actually be a good business move.
I wouldn't mind a shake up in the display network side of things. "Carbon" ad network is a great example of what can come out of a niche, well managed ad network and people choose them because they are present where the eyeballs for their demographic are. Like putting motor oil adverts on a racetrack. You don't have to track people around for those types of networks to work.
It's weird that tracking-based ads have taken over. Logically, contextual makes a lot more sense. But apparently statistical data is telling ad companies that tracking is worth it :(
These ideas don't work together Google. First, I don't want to see ads at all to lookup information. Encyclopedias didn't have advertisements in their Table of Contents. Second, you can't show relevant ads for users while keeping user data anonymous, especially when your algorithms and methods of doing so are closed-source.
What if websites just return to contextual ads and proper opt-in consumer studies (as traditional groups like nielson still do) instead of tracking everything their users do online and offline for aggressive targeting?
Then we wouldn't need to "save the cookies".
Welcome to the net monopoly!
This is a weak attempt at showing how tracking Google has been a part of and enabled is not being accepted by certain vendors anymore.
Let's build a cross OS, cross browser and cross platform set of standards, not just for the web but computing as a whole.
Also, didn't Google propose cutting the web manifest to prevent tools like uBlock from working as well? Not sure what's going on with this...
Including delivering browser exploits [1] to better track users, for which Google was fined.
People's privacy is undermined primarily by companies which would do anything to track users, not by attempts to prevent tracking.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19200279
> We’ve seen this recently in response to the actions that other browsers have taken to block cookies - new techniques are emerging that are not transparent to the user, such as fingerprinting.
- "large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting"... so it means: one way or another, it's OK to gather as much information as possible to show relevant (targeted and weel paid) ads. But there are good ways (cookies) and bad ways (fingerprinting).
- "blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding". And what about delivering "standard" ads ???? Newspapers have shown non-targeted ads for years and nobody complained about that (I mean... except marketers maybe). If publishers stopped relying on targeted ads, maybe they may at last find some really new business model (like shared subscription) instead of just being lazy, using Google/Facebook products ?
- "If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone", meaning...? Oh... less things to show on google search engine and with AMP. As Google is not producing content by itself but using (stealing?) content produced by others, it's quite understandable that their bottom line is tied up to the content publishers providing free content. Actually, maybe Google should pay content provider to be able to include it in their serach engine ? (ok... link the link tax)
It seems to me that Google doesn't understand that users DON'T WANT TO BE TRACKED AT ALL. It has gone too creepy for years. It's not a matter of being tracked by one trick or another, it's not been tracked AT ALL. But, admitting this would mean the end of GoogleAds. And Google seem to has lost any creativity to find new solutions to replace that product that users can't bear anymore. Sad... "do no Evil" if really gone forever :-(
The real solution is to "Get off Google". If everyone reading this did that, would it impact them? No, they would be fine. But I think it's better to do something rather than nothing.
As with climate change, systemic problems can't be solved with individual action.
I think people leave out the word “only” in statements like yours. Systemic problems can’t be solved with only individual action but the actions of many individuals can very much set examples, serve as encouragement to others, shift norms, and make the political space for regulated or coordinated action more available.
We should not exempt ourselves from individual action, especially when it is inconvenient, simply because our small change won’t single-handedly solve the whole problem. This goes for browsers, “free” email, privacy, and environmental impact.
Same from buying power. You can either buy from small business and make a difference for a family. Or you can keep shopping at big box stores. Sure it feels like a small impact, but this isn't small at all for the small business. Those things add up.
Dealing with a monopoly at an individual level is an exercise in futility.
Right now people are incentivized to use these "free" services because they feel like that's what is in their best interest. And to be honest, they are probably right in the current state of the world. I would be significantly worse off if I refused to use any Google services. I literally wouldn't be able to do my current job.
Making any type of change isn't going to come from us, but from regulators who force change.
It is not my purpose to change anyone's decision but mine. That alone is enough impact for me.
> I would be significantly worse off if I refused to use any Google services. I literally wouldn't be able to do my current job.
You have a tough choice indeed (I am in the same situation). But the choice is yours. And yours alone.
But they can certainly be improved.
The problem, of course, is that incentives are misaligned and the company's purpose in collection and use is often different from the user's purpose. And the laws are still written to the service provider's purpose not the users' purpose. Its left to the company to align them.
I use Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps. Each has a perceptibly different balancing of those purposes.
Where by "Internet" I mean "running 3rd party code talking back to a server over a global network". One way is going back to the original WWW design of hyperlinked documents, removing cookies and javascript altogether. Tracking becomes limited to the set of hyperlinked documents accessed, which could be proxied by a 3rd party for anonymization purposes. However, there are a few downsides.
* No authentication to remote servers. Forget web email, shopping or banking. On the plus side, forget social media as well.
* No business model for content publishers.
* No rich web UIs, for example maps.
Is there a middle ground?
While it doesn't seem likely to be viable even for a single person (primarily because of the government and banking services), it sounds rather nice to me, and such a sentiment pops up here and there.
> No authentication to remote servers.
No certain types of custom authentication, but standard HTTP authentication doesn't require executing freshly loaded code. Even custom forms-based authentication doesn't require to do that, or to use cookies.
> No business model for content publishers.
This is probably meant to be exaggerated; surely there are content publisher business models not reliant on JS-powered advertisement (e.g., subscriptions, tracking-free advertisements, donations, perhaps merchandise).
> No rich web UIs, for example maps.
I find this example rather interesting: it's a common and old application of pushing the limits of web browsers, and a seemingly common example of the need to do so (perhaps because maps are useful to many people, and the need in a specialized UI for those is hardly controversial). But it also seems quite sensible to me to use a dedicated program (which doesn't run on top of a web browser, that is) for mapping.
As long as there is no enforcement and zero punishment for these sites that continues to track, this isn't a compromise at all.
Google is biased in this situation because a large chunk of their revenue is based on these ads.
Awesome, we killed advertising and fixed privacy but now what have we gained? A walled-garden on the truth?
I would like to suggest a great talk about this topic from David Schwartz. https://youtu.be/FUtlTgWyX5w?t=5223 Use this URL for the web monetization part he come straight to the point. Whats broken, why and how to fix it in less than 2 minutes. He then explains more technically how the internet of value can/is be created. Very interesting for anyone who know the basic about IP and the different layer that made our internet really usable.
I someone wanna watch his full talk use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUtlTgWyX5w&t=4200s