back to article Google's 'Ask me anything' on Privacy Sandbox was more about questions than answers

Google conducted an "Ask me anything" panel on its controversial Privacy Sandbox proposals at its online I/O event. The company talked a lot about privacy at I/O and keynote attendees heard the phrase "private by design" repeated many times; a claim that merits scepticism bearing in mind the extraordinary amount of data …

  1. Dan 55 Silver badge

    The answer is staring Google in the face

    FLoC is about... ways to do ad targeting when third-party cookies and the profiles built based on them are not available any more

    They're not available because people don't want to be targeted.

    What happens when too many people block FLoC, will Google understand what they are being told or just invent yet another piece of Googly ad-tech software?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The answer is staring Google in the face

      "What happens when too many people block FLoC"

      FLoC is something actually embedded into Google's browser, so good luck with that, unfortunately. Too many people seem to like Chrome, for some reason, and seem to think it is a "good" browser.

      Perhaps it might be something that technical users could block at their firewall (which rules out the vast majority of web users for a start), assuming that it is possible to identify it (I expect it'll be just yet more encrypted port 443 traffic going to a Google hostname, which might not even be possible to distinguish from other chatter (eg, refreshes of the "Safe Browsing" list) by IP address(es) or hostname?), and further assuming that Chrome doesn't just clam up if it doesn't get a response.

      Google users are just the product being sold, after all. (It's just occurred to me: are they actually making a sneaky FLoC of sheeple inside joke here?)

      1. marcellothearcane

        Re: The answer is staring Google in the face

        As far as I can tell, you can either disable JS (which is fine or better for a lot of sites to be honest), or have a plugin which would set the floc thing to "undefined" (<code>window.cohort = undefined</code> or such)

  2. iron Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    > Google makes most of its money from the ads that appear on Google Search. Those ads are based on what people just searched for. So while most of the sites in the world would lose 50-70 per cent of their revenue in the alternative you're advocating for, Google is not one of them.

    The point is not to make Google lose money but to stop you being an evil data hoarding leech. And, if Google can make plenty of money by basing its ads on what a user searched for - lets call it the "content" of the search page - then most of the sites in the world can also show ads based on the content they are showing to the user. Relevant ads to what the user is actually interested in like we had 20 years ago, not the current it might be relevant to what you were interested in a month ago ads you currently serve. So more relevant and without any of the despicable practices you currently employ.

    That said tbh I think its too late for the ad model. Google, Facebook and the ad agencies have killed it due to their unrestrained, naked greed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "...I think its too late for the ad model.

      The ad model left the building years ago, it moved into the spy model a decade or so ago. Most of the money is being made from spying on citizens, seriously...

      This is how it currently works (sadly)...

      --- daily citizen harvest: entry #1 -----

      1a. You're phone just reported that you're inside a doctor's office.

      1b. You're credit card just reported you're inside a doctor''s office.

      1c. You're insurance provider just reported you're inside a doctor's office.

      1d. You're doctor's office just reported you're inside a doctor's office (yep :-/).

      2. Gather all information on patient and office then anonymize or "accidentally" forget to anonymize the data and send it to corporations X, Y, and Z.

      --- daily citizen harvest: entry #2 -----

      1a. You're phone just reported you're inside a grocery store.

      1b.....

      It's a pure spy game, this fact cannot be danced around.

    2. jvf

      As I’ve mentioned before, if I am “served” up ads (those that make it through my defenses) I want to see something new and different not more of the same shit. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

      1. Shalghar

        Those selling or otherwise profiting from "interest based ads".

        While the one and only interest on behalf of marketing this kind of creepyspamscam is the interest to make customers of the adslingers believe that permanently ADnoying possible buyers with anything will increase the advertising buying corporations profits.

        If i look at what nonsense ADnoyance i get "delivered", my adslinger-assumed interests definitely differ totally from my real life interests, so i really get something"new" (read: uninteresting and inappropriate i never would voluntarily search for nor am interested in) but only in so far connected to me as any old school street billboard already "delivers" to my not at all interested eyes without invading my hardware..

  3. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Trying to sidestep the inconvenient legislation

    Goooooooooooooooooooogle are not alone. NYOB recently reported that Farcebook are trying to make data collection for targeted advertising a contractual requirement instead of relying on consent - a blatant attempt to deny data subjects their right to refuse. It probably won't stick though as under the regulations relating to e-commerce, regardless of the basis on which the data is collected, its use for targeted advertising requires consent anyway. Nevertheless they're giving it a go, just in case they get lucky...

  4. nematoad

    "So while most of the sites in the world would lose 50-70 per cent of their revenue in the alternative you're advocating for, Google is not one of them."

    Pity.

  5. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Chrome the Trojan Horse

    Not that it is any surprise; it has, of course, been googlies’ plan since chrome’s inception. They want to make the Internet into its own personal monitoring and spy network just so they can sling adverts at you that you don’t want.

    Of course, that’s pretty much what the Internet is already but this will just confirm it.

    As for being able to disable these “features” (as has been suggested above), well I very much doubt any such switch will exist in chrome. As a side note, I’m still amazed that everyone seems to have flocked to chrome like it’s the pied piper - it’s nuts!

    The wider danger though is that because so many websites seem to rely on googly functionality ( the number of web sites that DON’T link to something to do with googlies can be counted on one hand), I think we will find that they will start to only work if this new crappy functionality is enabled in the browser.

    You will be assimilated. Resistance in futile.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Rich 2 - Re: Chrome the Trojan Horse

      Add to that Google's membership of World Wide Web Consortium where they're pushing for standards that serve to advance their agenda.

    2. Vocational Vagabond

      Re: Chrome the Trojan Horse

      may be that I'll be assimilated, but I'll get good exercise kicking and screaming as I go :) . . .

  6. Magani
    Happy

    Thanks for the reminder

    My Pi-Hole must be just about ready to be emptied of all the ads it's saved me from viewing.

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Thanks for the reminder

      Oh yeah, thanks too @magani, for reminding me.

      Because mine is headless, I can tip it on one side, over the waste bin, and all of the ads spill out of the HDMI slot.

      1. Dinanziame Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Thanks for the reminder

        I used to redirect everything to /dev/null, but it was getting dangerously close to collapsing into a singularity.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Thanks for the reminder

          Thankfully, good old-fashioned bit-buckets are self emptying.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    targeted malvertising

    "FloC could be used in user-harming ways such as higher prices for those more likely to pay, and "targeted malvertising""

    Malvertising, targeted or not, is the main reason ads are not allowed on my network or devices.

    You don't even have to be visiting dodgy pr0n sites to be hit with a malicious script anymore.

    A family member had their laptop infected with the Kovter rootkit while browsing articles on a well-known, reputable news website.

    The advertising scene is such a mess that it should be treated as openly hosile and blocked accordingly.

    https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/41315d87daabe6080db34b0d2f5d097f2513710c6b1247beee455699b44d827a/detection

  8. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Stop

    "keep the web as interoperable"

    The web is perfectly interoperable right now. You don't have to do anything to ensure that.

    Don't try to make us believe that you're trying to save the web. The only thing you're trying to save is your revenue model.

  9. MOH

    Kleber said Privacy Sandbox is all about "partitioned identity," adding: "We're trying to transition to a web in which the site you are visiting might have its own personal notion of some information about you like what you've done while visiting that site in the past but there's not a way to take one site's notion of what it knows about you and another site's notion of what that site knows about you and join them together."

    But surely that’s straightforward? If it’s beneficial to me then I’ll be willing to create an account on the site and then they’ll be able to track me by that on their site.

    "FLoC is about... ways to do ad targeting when third-party cookies and the profiles built based on them are not available any more," said Kleber.

    Ahhhhh, there we go. So this is no way beneficial to me, it’s purely about you trying to continue retaining profiling information to sell ads, without explicit user opt-in. Good luck with that. Not.

  10. Ozan

    after all this years, all that tareted ads sucked more and more. Maybe ad based on content of the page would work better.

    Also, Google pretends they wont lose money in any add business. Google the biggest ad middle man. THey sure will lose big cases of money.

  11. DrXym

    Oh Google

    If other browsers are using privacy as a selling point, then maybe Google should do the same. If they're worried about losing revenue, make the default different but at least give the option. Or just cooperate with other browsers to produce a robust privacy model that the user can control. Because anything short of that looks like a load of old bollocks.

    Case in point is FLoC which sounds better than 3rd party cookies but just moves tracking into an opaque blob controlled by the browser, which in Chrome's case comes from Google. In addition, that cohort now primes websites with a bunch of information that they were denied before. And you'd better believe that websites are going to snaffle up that cohort with other uniquely identifying info in the browser (user agent, screen size, performance timing) to pinpoint a person exactly. So instead of increasing privacy it's probably making it impossible.

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