Cookies Track You Across the Internet. Google Plans To Phase Them Out (nbcnews.com) 90
Google has announced plans to limit the ability of other companies to track people across the internet and collect information about them, a significant change that has widespread ramifications for online privacy as well as the digital economy. From a report: The company said Tuesday that it plans to phase out the use of digital tools known as tracking cookies, which other companies use to identify people online and learn more about them. The move is meant to offer users greater control over their digital footprints and enhance user privacy, according to Google. But the move could also provide Google with even greater control over the online advertising market, which the company already dominates. Google said the change will come to its Chrome web browser and be rolled out over two years. Google did not announce any changes to its own data collection methods.
Google also said that a previously announced change to make third-party cookies more secure and precise in their abilities will be rolled out in February. Justin Schuh, director of engineering for trust and safety for Google's Chrome, said the search giant needs time to enact changes because it is working with advertisers and publishers to address the need for cookies to remember sign-ins, embed third-party services such as weather widgets and deliver targeted advertising. But he did not downplay the significance of Google's announcement. "We want to change the way the web works," he said in an interview.
Google also said that a previously announced change to make third-party cookies more secure and precise in their abilities will be rolled out in February. Justin Schuh, director of engineering for trust and safety for Google's Chrome, said the search giant needs time to enact changes because it is working with advertisers and publishers to address the need for cookies to remember sign-ins, embed third-party services such as weather widgets and deliver targeted advertising. But he did not downplay the significance of Google's announcement. "We want to change the way the web works," he said in an interview.
Monopolistic advantages (Score:5, Interesting)
Google can already track users across the web using the Chrome browser's internal custom code. By getting rid of global cookie tracking, they're eliminating competition to their lucrative online marketing business. This is just the next level of anti-trust monopolistic practices for Google!
Re:Monopolistic advantages (Score:5, Interesting)
Google can already track users across the web using the Chrome browser's internal custom code. By getting rid of global cookie tracking, they're eliminating competition to their lucrative online marketing business. This is just the next level of anti-trust monopolistic practices for Google!
Came on here to say exactly this. I do not want to be tracked on the internet for commercial purposes at all. I think I might complain to my attorney general over this. This is clearly a 100% pro Google move. I don't understand how anyone who works at Google can be okay with this. I actually brought this up with a Google employee and her response was "You can ask Google to delete all the data Google stores about you. Why should you care?" Uhh... I've just told you I don't trust Google and now you're telling me to trust Google to actually delete things when I ask them to? There's some real cognitive dissonance going on over there.
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People who work at Google are ok with it, because they have Google stock options, Google RSUs, and participate in the Google employee stock purchase program. Implementing this causes Alphabet's stock to rise, and they all get paid.
Don't underestimate greed as a motivational factor to leave any morals or ethics at the door. After all, that's what anti-competitive behavior is all about.
Re:Monopolistic advantages (Score:5, Interesting)
People who work at Google are ok with it, because they have Google stock options, Google RSUs, and participate in the Google employee stock purchase program. Implementing this causes Alphabet's stock to rise, and they all get paid.
No, not really. I work for Google, and my compensation has nothing to do with why I'm okay with most of what Google does (there are a few exceptions, not many).
The reason I'm okay with it is because I see behind the curtain. Take, for example the Google Takeout project that jittles belittled. I know some people who work on that team and they're extremely serious about making sure that when you request that something is deleted, it is absolutely, completely and irrevocably deleted. By and large, people at Google really are dedicated to doing the right thing, and most of the awful assumptions about Google's "real behavior" that float around are just that: assumptions, with no basis in fact.
Of course, most of my trust in Google is due to the current employees and the current culture. And I'm not quite as confident of either of those today as I was a few years ago. Google is slowly but surely turning into a typical American megacorp. It has a long, long, long way to go before it gets there. it's still the case that the vast majority of Google employees can do their jobs, day in and day out, focused entirely on figuring out how to do the most good for the users without ever once worrying about the bottom line. That's very different from most.
You'll notice, if you look, that the big employee uprisings have been over social issues, not Google's bread and butter business practices. That's because if you see how the bread and butter business practices work, there's very little to object to. Google collects a lot of data on people (but would rather not [slashdot.org]), but Google also does an outstanding job of protecting that data from leakage, from abuse by employees, from use in any other way than intended (mostly to target ads), and from government intrusion (of course, Google has to comply with proper court requests).
But I am concerned that Google's gradual change will eventually morph it into an organization that cannot be trusted with all of this data. I think that's all but inevitable, a sort of corporate law of entropy. I was very disheartened to see that Sergey Brin has stepped completely away. For years I viewed him as the company's highest-ranking conscience (at least on business practices). Because I fear that eventual future, I actually put a fair amount of effort into keeping user data away from Google.
In 2018, for example, I put a lot of time into designing cryptographic protocols to enable secure backups of Android devices, to ensure that Google can safely store and restore them, but can't decrypt them, even by brute force application of the company's massive computing power. In 2019 I spent most of my time working on how to store driver's licenses and other important identity credentials in Android devices, and the architecture not only keeps the data well-protected by security chips, but also explicitly does not ever let it touch a Google server. To make sure that my approach was good, and I wasn't missing anything, I consulted with representatives of the ACLU and EFF, and I told them that one of my main goals was to keep the data away from Google.
This is pretty typical. All designs have to be approved by a Privacy Working Group team, and the PWG people are not only rabidly-focused on their jobs, but they have huge clout. You know how in most companies if Legal says "You must do X this way", that's the final word? PWG teams are roughly that powerful in Google.
In part this is in response to public pressure, and the FCC consent decree, I think. But I think a lot of employees are doing what I am, trying to ensure that if/when in some future world Google does become evil, it can't do much harm.
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But why did they remove "Do no evil" from their charter?
You talk a good thing here, but how do we know you are not
just shilling?
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People who work at Google are ok with it, because they have Google stock options, Google RSUs, and participate in the Google employee stock purchase program. Implementing this causes Alphabet's stock to rise, and they all get paid.
No, not really. I work for Google, and my compensation has nothing to do with why I'm okay with most of what Google does (there are a few exceptions, not many).
The reason I'm okay with it is because I see behind the curtain. Take, for example the Google Takeout project that jittles belittled. I know some people who work on that team and they're extremely serious about making sure that when you request that something is deleted, it is absolutely, completely and irrevocably deleted. By and large, people at Google really are dedicated to doing the right thing, and most of the awful assumptions about Google's "real behavior" that float around are just that: assumptions, with no basis in fact.
And then, I know a few ex-Googlers and the story sounds a bit different when they tell it. Makes me glad Google did not take me way back, because I would for sure have left as well by now. ( I would actually not even have applied, but a friend working there wanted me for his team. Have to say their "interviews" were pretty bad, always requiring the simplistic answers. If you actually had a clue and respective experience, they could not tell...) But it is interesting that some still believe the "Don't be evi
Re:Monopolistic advantages (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying "Google doesn't actually want your data" is disingenuous and laughable. It's like saying to the prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, "I don't wont to torture you, I really don't. If only I could get that vital info for free without having to resort to such despicable behaviour ... but, oh well."
Re: Monopolistic advantages (Score:1)
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Why should I trust what you think about Google?
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"Don't underestimate greed as a motivational factor to leave any morals or ethics at the door. After all, that's what anti-competitive behavior is all about."
And this is why I don't put much trust in people, and you shouldn't either. Anybody can be bought if the price is right. Always be ready to get backstabbed by the sweetest, warmest smiling people. This includes your family.
Am I being overly paranoid? After all of the shit I've seen first hand, I don't think so.
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Just block google analytics, doubleclick, etc. at the DNS level. That's 99% of the job done.
There's a page that lets you see what google knows about you, I went there and it turns out they know almost nothing.
https://www.google.com/history... [google.com]
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So basically it's not spyware and ask the claims about it are bullshit. Snowflake Google haters mod posts pointing this out down.
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This is an outright lie. Chrome is not spyware and does not spy on you.
Produce evidence or stop lying.
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Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clarke's Fourth Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from totalitarianism.
Pandora's box: May include objects indistinguishable from magic.
Pandora's curse: Objects indistinguishable from magic are pretty much indistinguishable from x for a broad and concerning list of attributes, including totalitarianism.
The modern internet is very, very advanced.
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also came to state the above -- google's privacy push for https is totally for their own benefit along with other supposed privacy pushes.
Gamers gotta game (Score:2)
Google can already track users across the web using the Chrome browser's internal custom code. By getting rid of global cookie tracking, they're eliminating competition to their lucrative online marketing business. This is just the next level of anti-trust monopolistic practices for Google!
Brief, but sort of insightful. I think it's too brief for the mod point, however. (Not that I ever get a mod point to give.)
Per my new subject, I think the real problem is that the game is rigged. Of course the google is going to try to rig the game in the google's own favor. I think the google is less concerned about the evils of invading privacy by cookie abuse than with failure of cookies to favor the google.
However it isn't the fault of the cookies. Technology remains morally neutral, but always subject
Yes but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is exactly what localStorage is for. All browsers support it and have been supporting it for years. Information is stored per domain and localStorage information of other domains is not available. So it's perfect for the use case you mention, and it prevents tracking across multiple sites. Some information here: https://www.w3schools.com/html... [w3schools.com]
Re:Yes but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's replacement technology for website logins will almost certainly use a custom Google service (like AMP) which will track logins (thereby linking your non-Google web logins to Google accounts) or otherwise force small to medium sized websites to replace their login systems with OAuth-based social logins. To use any website that requires a login, you'll now have to login through a Google or Facebook account. They'll spend the next two years telling everyone how much "more secure" this is.
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With Microsoft switching to Chromium in Edge there will soon no longer be a need for Chrome at all. If you care about privacy you're probably using Firefox, otherwise why download Chrome when Edge is the same thing and is already installed?
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With Microsoft switching to Chromium in Edge there will soon no longer be a need for Chrome at all. If you care about privacy you're probably using Firefox, otherwise why download Chrome when Edge is the same thing and is already installed?
Because Google will ceaselessly nag you to switch until you capitulate.
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With Microsoft switching to Chromium in Edge there will soon no longer be a need for Chrome at all.
Lol, Microsoft has become so irrelevant that they are just using Google's code. Somehow you think this means that Google is the one that doesn't matter now.
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Why do most MacOS users use safari and not chrome?
See also useragent announcement (Score:2)
This just goes hand in hand with them disabling user agents.
With ip addresses, useragents and assuming non-homogeneous household (like most people have) you can easily track someone across the web. [My wife and I each have a phone and a laptop and none of them have the same useragent.]
This is just a one-two punch of ad vendor lockin.
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Google can already track users across the web using the Chrome browser's internal custom code. By getting rid of global cookie tracking, they're eliminating competition to their lucrative online marketing business. This is just the next level of anti-trust monopolistic practices for Google!
I think you couldn't be more wrong.
Keep in mind one very important fact: Google doesn't want your data.
Google wants to show you ads for things you might be interested in, because that's how Google makes 80+% of its money. To date, the most effective way to do that is for Google to collect information about you, from which it can attempt to deduce your interests (including, apparently, regularly offering to sell you that thing that you just bought).
But while all of that user information is clearly an
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Yes, but how do you train the model in the first place without broad collection? Once you train the model and assign a 10,000 column preference vector to each user agent (UAPV), and you configure the request header to include the UAPV on each separate encrypted request, you probably could run Google's advertising business with no further private data stored or exposed.
I'm totally missing the egg part, however.
Plus Google has a long-term interest in their machine learning capability becoming more valuable th
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Google can already track users across the web using the Chrome browser's internal custom code. By getting rid of global cookie tracking, they're eliminating competition to their lucrative online marketing business. This is just the next level of anti-trust monopolistic practices for Google!
That was my first thought too. And by changing things, they can cause problems for anybody not on their code-base (chromium) and hence ultimately hinder or even kill competition on the browser-market. Basically they are bullying all other players in the way an engineer (of low ethics) would.
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Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity and ignorance.
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Limit the ability (Score:5, Insightful)
May be a good thing (Score:2)
Key to understanding this move: "Google has announced plans to limit the ability of other companies to track people across the internet". Google doesn't want competition in invasive stalking people across the internet.
This is not *necessarily* a bad thing. If there were one - and only one - entity that tracks users and manages privacy correctly, then this could be a boon to both advertisers and online privacy. That one entity could hand out anonymized tokens for advertisers to track logins or do limited market targeting (and/or analysis), while keeping detailed user information confidential.
That would be IF (and that's a really big IF) such a company could be trusted.
Said company would have to published a detailed policy
Re: May be a good thing (Score:2)
There are other uses for third party cookies. Authentication is a big one. The browsers have to choose to A) nag the user to use third party cookies which means the user will likely just do "always allow everything from everywhere" to avoid the nag B) maintain a problematic whitelist of known good actors or C) allow third party cookies by default, but let the user opt-in to getting nagged by disabling it (which is what most browsers do). None of those are good options.
No! NO PHASE OUT! (Score:5, Funny)
Everybody feel free to join in! (Score:2)
C is for cookie,
that is good enough for me!
Cookie cookie cookie starts with C!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Is this illegally anti-competitive? (Score:3)
Even though I don't view the market of information gathering to drive advertising as a clearly praiseworthy endeavor, the market is nonetheless a large existing market. Google can significantly impact this market via unilateral actions that limit competitors in an unbalanced way. That is, Google can utilize its dominance in one market (web browsers) to gain competitive advantages in a different market. Shouldn't this violate anti-trust laws?
Re: Is this illegally anti-competitive? (Score:2)
Anti-trust regulates using monopolies to force customers into using unrelated products. Chrome is nowhere near a monopoly.
Google could be hit with anti-trust if they forced marketing departments to use Chrome to access their ad platform. Google arguably has a monopoly in web-based advertising.
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Anti-trust regulates using monopolies to force customers into using unrelated products. Chrome is nowhere near a monopoly.
Google could be hit with anti-trust if they forced marketing departments to use Chrome to access their ad platform. Google arguably has a monopoly in web-based advertising.
Whether Google has a monopoly with Chrome is an important question. From the FTC website [ftc.gov], "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find
Re: Is this illegally anti-competitive? (Score:2)
You can't have a monopoly on open source software. The argument would need to be made based on Chrome's market share and positioning alone. Windows was around 90+% when they got hit with anti-trust over IE.
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You can't have a monopoly on open source software.
I'm not saying this is wrong, but I don't see any support for this idea. The key point is whether there is "single firm conduct" with "significant and durable market power" to "raise price or exclude competitors". I don't see why open source status shields a company if the software has the ability to unilaterally raise prices or exclude competitors.
The argument would need to be made based on Chrome's market share and positioning alone. Windows was around 90+% when they got hit with anti-trust over IE.
No, a monopoly is not directly about market share but rather about the ability of that company to unilaterally direct the market. And even existence as a mono
Of course they do (Score:4, Insightful)
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The other major browsers (sans firefox) are all Chromium based, and under Google control. They can use the same browser fingerprinting in IE or Opera that they can in Chrome.
But hey "do no evil"! Enjoy your Stadia.
Re: Of course they do (Score:2)
Yes.
Now, I agree that non-Chrome users incidentally stand to gain from this change due to a 'herd immunity' of sorts, but I'm not, for a second, pretending that this change constitutes altruism on behalf of Google.
Has Google released the source code of Chrome? Not chromium, the yellow-icon one that Google peddles every time you go to google.com on a non-Chrome browser. Do they default to logging out of a user's Google account when the browser closes?
Because if they aren't doing these things, there isn't a c
Re: Of course they do (Score:2)
FUD. The closed source parts of Chrome are related to DRM and proprietary codecs, et al.
If you want purity, write your own browser using KHTML. Firefox isn't even free enough to be part of Debian. You can define your purity standards however you like, but it's silly to spread the idea that Chromium has been turned into spyware by Google.
Break 'em up (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: Break 'em up (Score:2)
Google has a monopoly in search and advertising, not browsers. It's not an anti-trust violation to create new products to support your monopoly. It's an anti-trust violation to use your monopoly to create market share for unrelated products.
What Google can't do is force marketing departments to use Chrome to check on their site analytics. That would be abusing their search monopoly to get people to use their browser.
It doesn't work in reverse.
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So you would rather have Microsoft, Cisco, and IBM who were the monopolists of the previous decades?
Re: Now IE is on Chromium, Google owns the web now (Score:3)
Yes.
Those companies had their own issues, but I'd argue, also a greater counterbalance. Cisco isn't exactly a monopoly, but while they cost a bunch of money, their gear generally works well and they do honor their support contracts better than most. IBM, I don't think, ever really had a monopoly...in mainframes, maybe, but were they ever really anticompetitive? Microsoft had its worts for sure, and I still laugh at people using IIS for a web server that isn't serving up Exchange, but is the argument that Go
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Cisco was never a monopoly in any market.
Re: Now IE is on Chromium, Google owns the web now (Score:2)
In business routers and switches, it was pretty close for a time. They were the most valuable public traded company in the world for a while.
Re: Now IE is on Chromium, Google owns the web now (Score:2)
So, write your own browser. Gecko and KHTML and Blink are all open source. Higher level frameworks like Qt have embeddable HTML views that do most of the heavy lifting for you. Spend some time integrating Google's own open source V8 engine and it will even run just as fast as Chrome.
It's not even that big of a project, depending on what features you think you need.
Google's Blink is becoming like a modern Mosaic: a reference implementation for the web that anyone can build from.
Probably really means... (Score:5, Insightful)
We want to make everyone use our services (Score:4, Insightful)
This is BS, google stands to benefit greatly from eliminating cookies as this will force people to use web services, which google is a provider of. Oh, you can't track your customers anymore? We have server for that...
IP Freely (Score:2)
Your IP plus surfing behaviors are enough to identify you now. Cookies are irrelevant and just competition from lesser services.
Deletion works wonders (Score:2)
Deleting all your files before you start surfing is a great way to limit their ability to track you. Since you're starting fresh, you look like a new person.
Also, having various forms of script blocking does wonders as well.
I guess it's past time... (Score:2)
I don't think I mind this. (Score:1)
firefox here i come (Score:1)
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TBH I hate firefox as a browser and company. but google has gone too far this time.
Anything you likely hate about Mozilla is also true of Google anyway.
How dumb can Google get in a single day? (Score:2)
First they want to remove user-agent strings from Chrome, now they want to remove cookies.
Who's still unconvinced that Google is determined to break the web to suit their agenda?
Re: How dumb can Google get in a single day? (Score:3)
The reliance on user agents and cookies is what broke the web. Google is just playing nanny because web developers have repeatedly demonstrated their inability to responsibly use what is provided to them.
Make tracking a monopoly (Score:3)
At the moment too many players have the ability to track users with cookies.
Replacing cookies with Google-exclusive trackers will shut out competitors and command higher prices for the user data.
I wonder if there will be an antitrust probe initiated by the other trackers. It would be interesting to see the creeps fighting each other.
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I wonder if there will be an antitrust probe initiated [against Google] by the other trackers.
I Googled this and found nothing.
Do No Evil? (Score:1)
The real reason for this: Follow the money (Score:2)
The real reason for this is not that Google is interested in helping people preserve their privacy. A much more likely explanation is:
(1) Google has identified a covert method of tracking everyone without using cookies, and (2) Google wants to force everyone else to come to them for this information instead of getting it themselves with cookies. It's just a further extension of their already onerous monopoly.
Translation... (Score:2)
Google has come up with something more devious than cookies to track you. There are lots of browser extensions to block cookies and JavaScript, etc. But what if they put something into the Chrome code itself that tracks you? Similar to what Microsoft is doing with telemetry in Windows 10. Since it is closed source you have no way of examining the code to see what it is actually doing.
These days the only time I use Microsoft or Google products is at work. Where I do nothing of a personal nature on company ti
Bullshit (Score:2)
I've had third-party cookies disabled since about 1 millisecond after they were invented.