Google asks websites to kindly not break its shiny new targeted-advertising API Google plans to ship its Topics API when Chrome 115 arrives on July 12. That's the API that's supposed to allow advertisers to target netizens with adverts tailored to their individual interests without impinging on people's privacy. And to help prevent those privacy problems, the ad giant is asking advertisers to promise they …
Search Engine Optimization is a polite name for "gaming search engines using every underhand, back door and cycle wasting trick we can think of" (i.e. "by any and every means necessary").
Its surprising that Google obviously hasn't heard of SEO because this is what happens when you ask advertisers politely to play by the rules. Those advertisers are about as decorous as a pack of starving dogs that's been thrown a joint of meat.
A lot of what's online is advertising for something for sale. SEO promotes those sites, because without it you get snowed under (by those that DO apply it) in search results.
It's one of those self perpetuating scams that's not fixable as you need serious research to follow the ups and downs of search engine algos that change with the weather and, ironically, to slow down SEO rigging - in other words, that too costs money.
Google certainly has heard of SEO because they are constantly battling with SEO 'experts' who are gaming the system and promising to get their client's activities to the top of the list in any search... take the fake 'anti-virus' suppliers and malware peddlers that used to get pushed to the top of the list when you searched for legit AV software like Norton or similar
(OK, so a lot of that would have been down to Google not policing AdWords properly, so a malware slinger could purchase an 'antivirus' AdWord to get their sound-alike Nórtón to the top of the search)
> legit AV software like Norton or similar
Those ads were so convincing you apparently think Norton sell anti-virus! Next you'll be extolling the virtues of McAfee's easy to use uninstaller!
No one should ever use software by Norton or McAfee on any device ever. Especially not their "anti" virus suites.
McAfee AV is extremely easy to remove. Watch this video for quick and easy tips on how. And on other important IT matters, especially involving backing up. Personally, I think that the back-up methods advocated in that video are vastly superior to most people's lame backup systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg
Targeted advertising - the only way to stay safe, to keep your privacy, is to be exactly the same as everyone else. Think the same, shop the same, browse the same and you can sink into invisibility, just one of the indistinguishable masses. Perfect fodder for the mercantile cannon of industries fighting for their rightful portion of your life: Welcome, my son, welcome to The Machine.
Or fire up your PiHole, cast Chrome to the wind, cry "For Harry" and delete cookies on exit. They may take our cycles with their outrageous scripts but they shall never have our Topics.
So on the laptops, that is fine as they are running adblockers and other No Script tools. Problem is the less techies phones when they "go on google" for something, type in a search term and the first few boxes are sponsered. piHole stops that, and so you will get "the internet is not working again.....". Education is not working in this case either
The countdown has started to the revelation that this is just another false declaration.
Old topics deleted ? No. They will be marked as deprecated, with the date of deprecation carefully stored for future reference.
You don't fool us, Google. Ad data is never deleted anymore, it just piles up higher and higher.
You don't fool us, Google. Ad data is never deleted anymore, it just piles up higher and higher.
And we pay for the service..
"Topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted. Topics are selected entirely on your device without involving any external servers, including Google servers. When you visit a participating site, Topics picks just three topics, one topic from each of the past three weeks, to share with the site and its advertising partners."
So it seems to rely on something local. Because AlphaGoo takes users privacy very seriously, presumably this means Chrome users can pick About:Topics and display the topics AlphaGoo has selected for them. If that shows Topic has decided you're most interested in hazlenuts, you'll get one in every ad. If the user disagrees, they'll easily be able to alter their preferences to reflect their actual preferences.
So a few weeks ago, I was looking for a new washing machine. This involved some searches for most reliable brands etc. For that week, it would have been one of the more active search queries. Now, the washing machine is sitting in my kitchen, so trying to sell me another one is pointless. If I could demote that interest in Topics, this may actually be useful.
For more sophisticated users, there will obviously* be a simple .xml file I can edit directly, or through a convenient app so I can express my preferences and see ads for stuff I might actually be interested in. Or I could delete it, set it to read-only, or do all the file things a device owner may reasonably be expected to be able to do with their own device and their own personal data. I mean I might not want my searches for 'Breaking strain of a scrotum', or 'Best ways to hang an ad exec by their nuts' visible to the whole world. Or maybe I do, and someone has produced such a device.
*Who am I kidding? It'll be encrypted and obfusticated 'for security'. But if it is local, it gives me hope that it can be manipulated or disabled. Hopefully in a way it can benefit the user.
"f I could demote that interest in Topics, this may actually be useful."
It would not only be useful to you, it would also be useful to washing machine sellers because they wouldn't then waste money by spending it with the advertising to place irrelevant adverts. So it won't happen.
So I should compile Chromium to provide random, wildly invalid topic data? Maybe it junks up ad-slinger databases. Maybe it does the good old full table scan because the queried topic is not within the type or bounds of the index.
Google's Topics has a very obvious path to becoming an invasive and hostile feature. Why not be first to abuse it?
It doesn't really matter as long as Google manages to convince the add industry this works. Whatever garbage is accumulated in Topics, it will be used to select a (useless for you) ad to be shoved down your throat. You will still be pestered with ads.
I hope you've noticed by now that each time you disable targeted advertising in Google or Microsoft ecosystem, you get a "you will still see ads but they will not be tailored to your interests". There's simply no way to tell them to f#$%ck off. They make their money by promising the ad industry their ads will be shown to you and nothing more.
Ad giant says to ad minnows please don't break our API, hoping everyone will forget about this:
It’s official: Google agrees to pay record $22.5M FTC fine in Safari bypass dispute
The thing that Google really wants is to kill third-party cookies in Chrome. That will massively reduce Google's competitors' ability to deliver targeted advertising. Google itself will be more or less unaffected, since most of their revenues comes from query-based ads next to search results. The only point of this API is to protect Google from antitrust actions.
And all predicated on the idea that "targeted" advertising is a good thing.
For me, it typically isn't.
I prefer ads relevant to the context of the page I am on - I don't want ads about things some algorithm is guessing I am interested in... Especially as most of devices in our household are shared use, so I get scenarios like ads appearing that are totally unrelated to my interests (as triggered by partners browsing - always know when she has been searching for clothes / perfume online as I (male) get a lot of stereotypical "female" oriented ads)
An API specifically for supporting advertising has no place in a browser. Or most other applications either come to that
Why would I want to use my electricity on facilitating some shitty advertising outfit’s desire to bombard me with adverts? The fundamental issue that Googlies and their ilk choose to consistently and completely ignore is that nobody actually wants their adverts popping up on their computer screens
"Topics are selected entirely on your device without involving any external servers..."
If true then you might have a measure of control over this snooping.
I don't know if Noscript would be able to kill it but as soon as it is released some public spirited person or persons will figure out a way to knock this nonsense on the head.
Alternatively don't use Chrome or any of its derivatives.
I thought you may be on to something, but then I found this
“Tailored to my interests” I must repeat to these ad slingers again: If you’re going to show me ads, don’t keep showing me the same old s**t. How many cordless drills do you think I’ll buy? Show me different s**t, you idiots.
I had that exact thought earlier today, only it was on Amazon, in the "Buy this again..." Bar. And yes, it was a cordless drill, specifically one I bought only a couple of months ago.
They really need to add some "disposable or consumable item" filter to the logic for that one. Especially because it is Amazon, who have a vested interest in making the sale as opposed to simply slinging the ad. After all if my drill has gone duff already I'm hardly likely to buy another of the exact same model am I?
I wonder if anyone has actually done a study in to how many actual sales result from targeted advertising, compared to the scattergun variety?
I presume there must be some sort of benefit to the advertiser given the time, trouble and expense required to compile the targetting data.
Perhaps only the companies selling the advertising space benefit from this.
Just in case there are any advertisers reading this, may I politely point out that it is extremely unlikely I will need another washing machine until the one I recently bought keels over. I mention this as you appear to assume I am some sort of manic washing machine enthusiast who is anxious to complete their collection.
“Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” - over 100 years old and regularly attributed to either U.S. retail magnate John Wanamaker or to UK industrialist Lord Leverhulme, depending on which side of the pond you are.
And there appear to be plenty of companies out there willing to tell you which half and, if you follow their system, how they are better than all the rest
I have striven for years to achieve an ad-free existence, and pretty much succeeded. Even YouTube has become usable via FreeTube. The latter cuts out not only standard ads, but also the new excrescence of 'sponsorship' injections into videos.
If I require a particular product or service, I scour relevant parts of the Internet and see what's on offer.
None of the above is difficult to achieve. I imagine there must be many people of sufficient savvy likewise engaged. Are there any figures about the proportions of populations which are immune to garbage?
How many people who aren't like you take those steps? I do it as well, but many of my friends, both technical and nontechnical, simply don't appear to care. Some of them have asked how to prevent it but won't take the most basic of steps, whereas others don't appear to find how much they have to do to bypass useless advertising unpleasant. Of course, many of them also don't care about data collection; I've stopped asking them how they feel about that because their answers are simultaneously depressing and confusing.
Does this mean that from now onwards only the highly-wealthy will receive ads for super-yachts, private jets, Caribbean islands, and such like?
Shall there be a middle tier of the 'upwardly mobile' and lifestyle conscious as recipients of intermediately expensive tat such as 'must have' watches and 'designer' handbags?
The bottom tier, obviously the largest, will be where soap powders, package holidays, payday lending services, online gambling, and tomato sauces will be touted.
Trust Advertisers... really? We became of world of adblockers because advertisers *proved* over and over again that they *can not* be trusted not be giant pillocks. Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders, Punching Monkies, click breakers, etc. etc. etc. The history of the Internet is the history of the advertising industry taking the mick.
[And to help prevent those privacy problems, the ad giant is asking advertisers to promise they won't abuse this ad targeting mechanism.]
People are already abusing the current system.
Really Google, resorting to people to pinkie swearing they won't abuse an easy to abuse thing? That's tragically hilarious.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
