[HN Gopher] Enter Sandbox: Google is building an internet withou...
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       Enter Sandbox: Google is building an internet without cookies
        
       Author : wolverine876
       Score  : 77 points
       Date   : 2021-01-17 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pressgazette.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pressgazette.co.uk)
        
       | 0x011721 wrote:
       | Advertising company takes steps to strengthen its advertising
       | monopoly and shoulder out the competition. News at 11.
       | 
       | Before you say "use firefox", ask yourself why Google donates
       | money to Mozilla.
       | 
       | The other aspect of advertising company is spy company. This will
       | give Google better ways to track users across the web. I'm sure
       | there will be no side effects and the information will be used
       | only for good.
        
       | birdyrooster wrote:
       | Why wouldn't services just proxy their vendors cookies for them
       | via another side channel? Then voila your third party cookie
       | problem goes away.
        
         | Dma54rhs wrote:
         | Mainly a trust issue with publishers.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | The main reason is speed. It ads extra latency that kills ad
         | response rates.
         | 
         | Secondly is trust. The third party has no way to verify the
         | first party isn't sending bogus requests to increase their
         | payments from the third party and/or hurt their competitors.
        
         | sleavey wrote:
         | I've wondered this for years. It was the first thing I expected
         | ad networks would start doing once third party cookies were
         | getting blocked widely.
        
       | lmkg wrote:
       | Google wants your Google Account to be the only Identity Signal
       | available on the web.
       | 
       | This feature is available right now in Analytics and Ads. It's
       | called "Google Signals." The documentation is publicly available,
       | although it's a little scattered between different product page.
       | I'll summarize:
       | 
       | If the user is using Chrome, and is logged into their Google
       | Account, then you can use _that_ instead of _cookies_. This is
       | used for pulling in demographic information, cross-domain
       | tracking, and cross-device tracking (something even 3rd-party
       | cookies can 't do without fingerprinting!).
       | 
       | The Privacy Sandbox kills _other_ channels that might be an
       | identity signal. Meaning ones available to parties other than
       | Google.
       | 
       | Even as an anti-Google zealot who disapproves of this, I'll admit
       | there are some ancillary benefits. For one, I honestly do believe
       | that Google intends to kill fingerprinting, because it's in their
       | interest to do so. For another, Google does offer a setting
       | "disable personalized advertising" which will centrally let you
       | opt-out of this tracking.
       | 
       | But most people are surprised when they find out that things
       | already work this way, which to me already puts it on ethically
       | dubious foundations from a privacy perspective. And, of course,
       | the monopoly issue.
        
         | cpeterso wrote:
         | > If the user is using Chrome, and is logged into their Google
         | Account, then you can use that instead of cookies.
         | 
         | How is the Google Account ID shared if not by cookies?
        
         | nahtnam wrote:
         | I wonder if they are also doing this to get around the GDPR
         | related cookies stuff. Don't need to have a banner if you don't
         | use cookies. I assume this would also apply to sites using
         | Google Analytics as well
        
           | Gwypaas wrote:
           | GDPR is actually technology agnostic, it doesn't mention
           | cookies or any other technology. If you store extra PII in
           | any way, cookies, fingerprinting, localstorage or whatever
           | you need to ask for consent with opt-in.
        
         | solarkraft wrote:
         | Obviously that just gives Google a monopoly on tracking. So
         | that's cool, I guess ...
        
           | uyt wrote:
           | Centralization is not always bad. Google is a single company
           | and can be regulated so you can opt-out.
           | 
           | I guess I just don't care who makes money off fingerprinting
           | as long as I can choose that no one makes money off me
           | personally.
        
         | wackget wrote:
         | How do you kill fingerprinting, though? It's impossible without
         | limiting what web developers can do with their sites.
        
         | hrktb wrote:
         | That's interesting, Google
         | 
         | > "disable personalized advertising"
         | 
         | On this bit, tracking concerns are not just for advertising
         | though. Extending your reading on how they replace cookies with
         | the Google id, I'd see them replacing ad targeting with other
         | uses of the data anything that wouldn't straight be labelled as
         | "ad" (scoring, black listing, indirect target matching, etc.)
        
           | joefkelley wrote:
           | I'm a Google engineer who interacts a little bit with this
           | kind of stuff.
           | 
           | There are a few settings for this kind of thing. You can take
           | a look at https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-
           | personalization
           | 
           | The "Ad personalization" bit is probably what the parent
           | comment is referring to. But it sounds like you're interested
           | in the "Web & App Activity" bit, which will turn off the non-
           | ads usage of your data. To a certain extent at least, since
           | there are some grey areas.
           | 
           | For example, I'm on the team that sends Google Shopping
           | emails. If you click a button to track the price of a
           | specific TV, we'll still send you an email if that price
           | drops even if you've opted out of "Web & App Activity". But
           | if you've just been browsing shopping pages for TVs, we won't
           | send you a general email about TV deals if you've opted out.
           | Both of those cases are in some literal sense "web activity"
           | but it's still pretty clear what the user expects.
           | 
           | But you might imagine- if you're tracking the price of a
           | specific TV and opted-out of Web & App Activity, should we
           | send you an email if a near-identical TV drops in price? We
           | probably wouldn't, and we don't have anything like this
           | today, but it's not quite as clear. And Google has so many
           | features across different teams, I can imagine there's
           | probably at least one where some privacy reviewer made a
           | different call than what you would have made.
        
             | lifeisstillgood wrote:
             | Forgive the grumpy old man approach here, but can't this
             | all just stop.
             | 
             | The price of a TV (or almost any common product) is driven
             | more by large scale factors (cost, competition, features
             | and brand) than the latest 4 dollar shift because of some
             | promotion in some channel somewhere.
             | 
             | We are optimising for the wrong things. Computers are
             | _supposed_ to be our agent in the digital realm, reaching
             | out for us, in our best interests.
             | 
             | If we turn off all storage of personalised information
             | completely and utterly, 95% of everything I ask can be
             | answered from context (please show me cheap TVs).
             | 
             | Look, i don't object to the idea behind the sandbox (it's
             | always been weird that browsers tell the server what fonts
             | and other settings exist. I mean who ever optimised for
             | that)
             | 
             | What bothers me is that it's a google id. Just let me have
             | a few U2F ids - this is my shopping id, track it if you
             | may. when I take it out of the slot stop tracking me.
             | 
             | I am sure I am feeling extra grumpy today, but when we stop
             | tracking and trying to find ways to make me buy, and start
             | finding ways to make my life better, that's when we have a
             | digital revolution.
        
         | cung wrote:
         | An interesting thing I've noted on disabling personalized
         | advertisements: My SO, who has personalized ads on and lives in
         | the same household, sees ads based on my behaviour. So the ads
         | aren't personalized to me, but they certainly are to my SO.
        
           | goliatone wrote:
           | Depending on the type of ads being served that cross-profile-
           | pollination could lead to info leakage and problematic and/or
           | weird situations. It makes me want to be able to build a fake
           | persona rather than a ghost/anonymous profile
        
             | konjin wrote:
             | You're assuming competence that isn't there. It's a shared
             | ip address, there is still plenty of tracking that is dumb
             | enough to assume that it means that you're the same person
             | and that gets thrown into her 'unique fingerprint'.
             | 
             | I'm not sure who gets the worst deal from tracking, the
             | companies buying ads or us having to see them.
        
             | conradev wrote:
             | I can't seem to find the name, but someone built exactly
             | this: an agent that sits on your computer and generates
             | noise. Visiting random web pages, performing random
             | searches, etc. You'd then get random, non-personalized ads.
        
           | input_sh wrote:
           | In other words, they're personalised to your IP address, but
           | since only your SO has personalised ads turned on, they see
           | what's personalised to both of you.
        
         | onion2k wrote:
         | _If the user is using Chrome, and is logged into their Google
         | Account..._
         | 
         | What does it do if the user _isn 't_ signed in to Google?
         | 
         | Google's engineers would have to have an _unbelievable_ level
         | of contempt for users to propose a feature that claims to
         | improve privacy by signing in to Google.
        
       | einpoklum wrote:
       | Another reason not to have Google profile and block them as a
       | 3rd-party when relevant, e.g. using EFF Privacy Badger and uBlock
       | Origin.
       | 
       | Also, try avoiding Chrome. At least use Chromium, preferably
       | something else.
        
       | cccc4all wrote:
       | Antitrust. That's it. That's the comment.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | Ok, so basically Chrome will keep a profile on you and send that
       | Google, so as long as the ads on the webpage are Google ads they
       | will be targeted, but any third party provider will not be able
       | to do the same?
       | 
       | Sounds like they are finally realizing their vision for making
       | Chrome in the first place -- to sell more ads.
       | 
       | I'll stick with Firefox with temporary tabs -- I already an
       | protected from third party cookies because Firefox already
       | isolates every tab, but importantly doesn't send my browsing data
       | anywhere.
        
         | Yetanfou wrote:
         | I'm still on Firefox as well, not using Chromium for anything
         | but testing and those sites which only work in the Google
         | browser. I do wonder if Firefox will remain to be the freedom-
         | friendly choice that it is purported to be given Mozilla's
         | CEO's recent call for a more censorship-friendly internet [1],
         | with "factual voices" (and who gets to decide what is fact, and
         | what is fiction or false narrative? Who will get to be the
         | Ministry off Truth?) being "turned on by default". I am
         | perfectly capable of deciding for myself how to find "truth" on
         | the net, thank you, and will stop using this browser if it
         | tries to make my choices for me.
         | 
         | [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-
         | than-d...
        
         | taf2 wrote:
         | Can you provide some references to where you're seeing this. If
         | anything they are killing off third party cookies just like
         | Apple and Firefox. Also they are making it so even third party
         | Javascript is less likely able to track you - meaning
         | everything has to be first party. IMO this just means there
         | will be a shift in how tracking works. Moving from third party
         | tracking scripts you install on your website to using CDN's to
         | pull code through or host on your own domain. IMO this means
         | you'll be less able to identify when you're being tracked much
         | more like how it works today on native apps, e.g. you can't
         | tell whether that native app is tracking you.
        
           | jedberg wrote:
           | I'm making some logical leaps. They appear to be killing off
           | 3rd party cookies just like Apple and Firefox. The difference
           | is that Apple and Firefox do not sell an ad product and don't
           | have a reputation for tracking your every move on the
           | internet. Google on the other hand _does_ have a reputation
           | for tracking you through Chrome.
        
             | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
             | Apple does sell an ad product, although I'm not sure
             | whether it has any presence on the web.
        
       | IgorPartola wrote:
       | The only use for cookies I can see is authentication. There are
       | other ways to authenticate that I have used that have been way
       | less burdened by security issues. Store an auth token in local
       | storage and transmit it as the Authentication header for example:
       | CSRF problems, works with whatever framework you want. Why do we
       | still need cookies at all?
        
         | srfvtgb wrote:
         | Can you do this without Javascript?
        
       | tomaszs wrote:
       | Google is building an internet without WWW, that is for sure:
       | 
       | "Because data are ultimately transferred to the same businesses,
       | it can be used to create detailed profiles, said academics. If
       | information from a dating app, for example, were shared with the
       | same parent company as data from a banking app, it could be
       | possible to deduce the sexuality of a bank's customers."
       | https://ig.ft.com/mobile-app-data-trackers/
        
         | uniqueid wrote:
         | World Wide Google. If a modern person goes with the flow, they
         | wind up using Google for every facet of their online life: OS,
         | web browser, search, email, youtube watching, personal photos,
         | cloud storage, DNS, address book, chat, office suite, wallet...
         | I wouldn't entrust my best friend with all that data, let alone
         | people over whom I have zero power and have never met.
        
       | figgyc wrote:
       | I think one thing overlooked is that Google's supposed rationale
       | for providing this service is effectively because they suppose
       | that their plans to "more aggressively block fingerprinting" will
       | leave advertisers with no other choice.
       | 
       | Personally I find this highly unlikely. The very nature of
       | fingerprinting makes it difficult to prevent without some pretty
       | severe compromises, and it wouldn't surprise me if advertisers
       | enter an arms race with Google instead of caving in.
       | 
       | Of course the economic strategy for Google to avoid that is to
       | reduce the price/limits of this service to so low that this isn't
       | worth doing, but if the effort Google puts into preventing
       | fingerprinting is insufficent then this would lead to a "worst of
       | both worlds" situation - Google gets to pseudonymously track the
       | internet with their "privacy sandbox", and nefarious
       | trackers/advertisers can combine that with fingerprinting to
       | create an even more reliable picture of who's who on the
       | Internet.
       | 
       | FYI, this[0] appears to be the explainer of what Privacy Sandbox
       | actually is, and it's quite vague, presumably because the actual
       | implementation details of this would be difficult to determine.
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/michaelkleber/privacy-model
        
       | SimeVidas wrote:
       | Contextual ads don't need cookies. The sooner publishers realize
       | that, the better for them.
        
         | AznHisoka wrote:
         | If I'm reading an article about the pandemic, I probably don't
         | want to see ads selling me face masks. If I'm reading an
         | article about the inauguration, I probably don't want ads
         | selling me inauguration t-shirts.
         | 
         | I am however more likely to click on ads selling me home
         | renovation stuff because they know I've recently bought
         | something in Home Depot. Even though I'm not currently on a
         | home renovation website.
        
           | dkdk8283 wrote:
           | I have never clicked on an ad and bought something.
        
             | AznHisoka wrote:
             | Ok you are extrapolating your experience to millions of
             | others in the world. Nothing wrong with that but it isn't
             | going to give you universal insights since you're a special
             | case.
        
             | tux1968 wrote:
             | Neither did anyone watching an ad on television, it's not
             | just about click-through rate.
        
           | thaeli wrote:
           | The most effective ads on me, in terms of intentional click
           | through rate (not going to count predatory clicks) are
           | contextual ads on specialized sites. This doesn't work well
           | for general stuff like news sites, but webcomics that do
           | their own ads, or a super focused forum like candlepower or
           | head-fi? Contextual ads are ideal there.
           | 
           | Second most effective are platform-specicic hypertargeted
           | ads, such as Facebook ads. Lot of misses there too, but their
           | first party targeting is good to the point of actually giving
           | me some interesting content.
           | 
           | In practice the third party "contextual" ads mostly are
           | misses for me. Wow, another ad for the home improvement thing
           | I either researched and bought last month, or that I was
           | looking up on a whim and don't have any intention of actually
           | purchasing.
        
           | ubercow13 wrote:
           | You've just given two bad examples, contrasted with one good
           | example, to prove your point. Pick a good example of a
           | contextual ad and a bad example of a personalised ad (there
           | are many) and the proof is reversed.
        
             | AznHisoka wrote:
             | Except that my example is more the more popular scenario.
             | Pageviews of general news site surpass pageviews of niche
             | websites about a specific topic. Just go look at the top
             | visited websites.
        
           | mcbits wrote:
           | Maybe some articles just shouldn't have ads at all. That
           | would be refreshing. Sites publishing ad-supported content
           | obviously need to put the ads somewhere, but that doesn't
           | mean every single article needs its own revenue stream to
           | justify its existence.
        
             | AznHisoka wrote:
             | I agree - that's a whole separate argument though. If the
             | argument is contextual vs personalized, personalized wins
             | imo
        
         | cblconfederate wrote:
         | They do. You can turn off personalized ads in adsense, but it
         | still requires cookie consent
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | That's an implementation issue. There's no technical reason
           | why a non-targeted ad needs tracking other than Google still
           | trying to stalk people.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | There is nothing your client can do (other than blocking ads
           | entirely) that would stop a company from serving you car ads
           | on a car site - that's contextual ads.
           | 
           | Personalized ads are the opposite - you're browsing a fashion
           | site, but you'll get car commercials because you've been
           | visiting car commercials lately.
        
             | input_sh wrote:
             | > (other than blocking ads entirely)
             | 
             | Easily avoidable in such case. You just need to do two
             | things:
             | 
             | 1. Serve them from your own domain where the URL pattern
             | isn't obvious (so not something like example.com/ads/ad1).
             | 
             | 2. Randomise HTML elements (div names, classes, a random
             | amount of empty divs in between).
             | 
             | Voila, ad-blocks are useless now.
        
       | cratermoon wrote:
       | Everyone in adtech, except perhaps Google, is worried. One non-
       | Google player I know is seriously concerned about what the
       | cookie-less web means or online ads. Essentially the entire
       | online advertising industry, both publishers and advertisers, is
       | built on 3rd-party cookies.
       | 
       | The goal: to show you only ads for things you care about and are
       | likely to buy and be influenced by advertising for, is good. But
       | the reality is a mess.
       | 
       | Some of the downsides of Google's proposal are obvious, given its
       | position, but there's at least one downside that users might
       | notice: lots more ads targeted only by the demographic of the
       | publication, making the web look more like print media or TV and
       | presenting you and me with a lot more space on our screens wasted
       | showing ads for things you don't care about.
       | 
       | As for the "fingerprinting" proposals? Bad. Very Bad. Think
       | digital "facial" recognition bad.
        
         | throwaway189262 wrote:
         | Advertising was around for thousands of years before tracking.
         | The fear is that they won't make as much money and will have to
         | go back to how they did it before all the privacy invasion.
         | Very sad indeed.
         | 
         | It's easy really, you just put ads on sites visited by your
         | target market. That's how advertising was always done before
         | Gattica style snooping was involved.
         | 
         | Individually targeted advertising needs to be illegal. It's bad
         | for society.
        
           | 1propionyl wrote:
           | It's not unreasonable to think that a lot of current digital
           | ad spend is 1) an arms race for slices of a pre-existing
           | attention pie that also resembles a protection racket, 2) a
           | huge waste of money.
           | 
           | There have been a couple of natural experiments showing #2
           | where entire digital ad spends were slashed at once with
           | little to no impact.
           | 
           | As for #1, look at where a massive chunk of Google's revenue
           | comes from: companies trying to squat their own name and
           | similar keywords to prevent some competitor's product from
           | showing up next to their own.
        
         | tonyedgecombe wrote:
         | _The goal: to show you only ads for things you care about and
         | are likely to buy and be influenced by advertising for, is
         | good._
         | 
         | No, that's bad. The last thing I want is to be influenced by
         | adverts.
        
           | tomComb wrote:
           | I'd rather be influenced by relevant ads that could possibly
           | be useful than ones that will just annoy me.
           | 
           | And I'd rather not make ads less effective because that would
           | mean either more ads or fewer publishers.
        
             | passivate wrote:
             | The Ad matching service gets paid when you buy something,
             | regardless of whether it is relevant, useful or needed by
             | you. What is effective for you, and effective for the ad
             | network are two separate things. Also, ads by their very
             | nature are designed to manipulate you into buying a
             | product. The more personal information they have, the
             | easier it is to manipulate you. Maybe you're still OK with
             | that, but many people think that this is the wrong
             | direction for the web.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | > I'd rather be influenced by relevant ads that could
             | possibly be useful than ones that will just annoy me.
             | 
             | It's easier to ignore ads that are totally irrelevant.
             | 
             | The ads that are targeted are the most distracting.
             | 
             | I'd rather see ads about some detergent than about a new
             | SSD drive that will catch my attention and makes me forget
             | what I was looking for in the first place. When I need a
             | new SSD, I will just visit a shop. I don't need ads for
             | that.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | But i'm happen to need a better mousetrap and so if you
               | can in some way let me know you are selling one I'll be
               | glad to take a chance in yours.
               | 
               | Sure I can ignore ads for feminine supplies (as a male
               | they are obviously useless to me), but I'd prefer if I
               | didn't have to.
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | This is a silly argument. Don't you think you'll have a
               | much better chance of finding a better mouse trap by
               | actively searching Google for it than by waiting for some
               | targeted ads to come by?
        
               | drusepth wrote:
               | I almost always hold off on purchases for a few days to
               | compare what I eventually put in my cart (if anything) to
               | ad-served competitors. There's usually very little
               | overlap with them and the products I was already looking
               | through, so it's a nice additional avenue of shopping
               | around. Sometimes the ads include discounts/promotions as
               | well, which is an added bonus.
        
               | bquest2 wrote:
               | Let's say that your search for mouse traps comes back
               | with the classic type that kills.
               | 
               | Wouldn't it be better that you see an ad for a no kill
               | mouse trap that you didn't even know was a thing? Ads can
               | sometimes inform people about products that they didn't
               | even think existed.
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | But a Google search is specifically designed to solve
               | this problem. Targeted ads, however, also could mislead,
               | distract, cause overconsumption, and invade your privacy.
               | 
               | And if there was a better mouse trap, then any salesman
               | would quickly learn about it (e.g. at business
               | conferences etc), so you could just go to a shop and ask.
               | 
               | Finally, if you really insist that targeted ads are
               | superior to anything else, then you could just opt-in to
               | a service that provides ads. And you could tell the
               | service all your private details so it knows how to
               | better serve you (without the service having to guess at
               | it).
               | 
               | Just don't assume that someone else needs targeted ads to
               | have a fulfilling life.
        
               | tomjen3 wrote:
               | Not if you don't know that the better mouse trap was even
               | possible. You are not going to search for "breathable,
               | waterproof shoes" if you don't know GoreTex is a thing.
               | 
               | Granted somewhere in the last 20 years we have mostly
               | stopped innovating and started optimizing and so now you
               | get ads for branded Skinner boxes (sorry, free to play
               | mobile games) rather than, say, cancer cures but if there
               | were innovating products worth buying, you wouldn't
               | search for them because you wouldn't even be able to
               | imagine them.
        
             | JoshTriplett wrote:
             | Why pick _either_ of those alternatives? Block all ads,
             | whether  "relevant" or not, so they don't compete for your
             | valuable attention.
             | 
             | > And I'd rather not make ads less effective because that
             | would mean either more ads or fewer publishers.
             | 
             | I'd rather make ads so ineffective that they go away
             | entirely. Some publishers will find a way to adapt.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | Exactly! Even for free market believers, ads are just a way
           | of manipulating consumers so that they are less rational, and
           | so they are a distortion of the market (in favor of the
           | biggest players, of course, as they can spend the most on
           | advertising).
        
         | freeone3000 wrote:
         | As opposed to the current advertisements, which are for... A
         | mobile game? Another mobile game. A behavioral science app. A
         | hyperspecific ad for a watch based on a video game I played,
         | which would be cool but is useless because I have already
         | bought _that exact watch_. An ad for an armored personnel
         | carrier.
         | 
         | Please. Individual targeted ads are _worse_ than content-based
         | ads.
        
           | tomjen3 wrote:
           | I fell left out because I want an ad for an armored personnel
           | carrier - I won't need it, but at least that ad would be for
           | something cool.
           | 
           | Honestly it feels like there haven't been any decent
           | innovations in a long time. Aside from Apple producing an ARM
           | laptop that doesn't suck I can't really think about what the
           | last product I was excited for was.
        
           | choeger wrote:
           | Wait a second. An armored personnel carrier? What's the
           | conversion funnel here? Do they send it to you? Do you get a
           | discount if you equip your own personal motorized infantry
           | battalion? Is there an update channel for anti-air?
        
             | MattGaiser wrote:
             | I get all sorts of ads from defense contractors when I am
             | in Ottawa, the capital of Canada.
             | 
             | I think they are just intending to target
             | lobbyists/politicians.
        
         | konjin wrote:
         | >presenting you and me with a lot more space on our screens
         | wasted showing ads for things you don't care about.
         | 
         | As opposed to the ads for toilet seats from that one time I
         | bought a toilet seat online 6 months ago.
         | 
         | If anything forcing adds to be dumb will mean that we get high
         | quality publications in niches again. If you sell model ships
         | advertising on model-ships-magazine.com actually incentivizes a
         | quality site that is interested in furthering the hobby and
         | keeps your dumb smart ads from clogging up the rest of my life.
        
         | 1propionyl wrote:
         | > ...there's at least one downside that users might notice:
         | lots more ads targeted only by the demographic of the
         | publication, making the web look more like print media or TV...
         | 
         | ...this is bad? Sounds great to me.
         | 
         | > ...showing ads for things you don't care about.
         | 
         | This is what targeted advertising already accomplishes: showing
         | me ads for things (or equivalents of things) I already own.
         | Either that or things so wildly off base I have to wonder if
         | the targeting works at all.
        
       | vishwajeetv wrote:
       | Unfortunately, their own single-sign on services require us to
       | have cookies enabled for client implementations (firebase auth),
       | that remains the only reason to keep using cookies on the webapps
       | I build.
        
       | sleavey wrote:
       | What's to stop a website gradually querying different API data on
       | each page load to build up a profile with the same amount of
       | information as before? Will browsers only allow the first N API
       | accesses forever more? Oh, interesting... lots of nasty mistakes
       | can be made by websites picking a bad set of APIs early on.
       | 
       | However it works, I don't trust it if it's coming from Google.
       | I'll keep my multiple layers of ad blockers enabled.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | TLightful wrote:
       | Good.
       | 
       | May be the most important thing google have done in decades.
       | 
       | Granted. Ive not read the article, so this could be a steaming
       | pile of ... but I'm hopeful.
        
         | BayAreaEscapee wrote:
         | I often find that the HN comments are more helpful than the
         | article itself. If I read a bit of an article and it doesn't
         | get to the point quickly, I just close it and start reading the
         | HN comments.
        
           | throw14082020 wrote:
           | I see whats going on here. One ignoramus to another.
        
       | duckfang wrote:
       | There is a potential counter here by everybody not google. Run a
       | browser string check, and redirect people to Firefox.
       | 
       | Google is being blatantly anticompetitive, and significantly
       | abusing monopoly status to further monopolies elsewhere. And the
       | govt won't come to help in any near future, so it's up to the
       | rest of us to back them off.
       | 
       | (Now, why firefox? Well, its not because FF allows better
       | tracking, but instead that nobody gets the tracking benefit. It's
       | not a 'screw users with FF', but 'screw Goog with no metrics'.)
        
         | izacus wrote:
         | How does redirecting people to a browser who actively blocks
         | tracking help publishers who want to track the crap out of you?
         | :)
        
         | throw14082020 wrote:
         | Like you rightfully implied in your last paragraph, there is no
         | incentive for websites to ask people to go to firefox. So they
         | won't do it.
         | 
         | I see companies siding with Google because they'll need to, to
         | survive or grow, in the short run anyway.
        
       | bobbydreamer wrote:
       | So httpOnly and secure flags are not that secure in cookies.
        
       | newbie578 wrote:
       | I actually really like this idea. I trust Google the most out of
       | all the other players, since they have the most to lose...
       | 
       | If Apple can have everything built around a single ID and be
       | praised for it's ecosystem, I don't see a reason why Google
       | shouldn't try, especially since there are people who like Google
       | more than Apple.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-17 23:00 UTC)