back to article More power to web apps, cries Google, and more privacy, too

At Google IO 2021 on Tuesday, the ad giant reiterated its web privacy commitments and talked up technologies aimed at narrowing the performance gap between web apps and their native counterparts. Ben Galbraith, senior director of product at Google, likened the process isolation built into Chrome to the internet giant's …

  1. Shadow Systems

    How to be secure...

    Use an external hardware firewall (such as a PiHole) to block FaceBook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, AdSense, & every other data harvesting, privacy raping, "You're not the customer, you are the product" server you can. Use a browser like Netscape Navigator. Refuse to run JavaScript, if not all scripts in general. Last but not least, use an OS that doesn't treat you like shit. I suggest a Commodore 128D, Amiga, or an Atari.

    I'll post a </Sarcasm> tag just in case you're irony deficient. =-)p

  2. sabroni Silver badge

    Aren't you supposed to make it clear

    when it looks like an article but is actually an advert?

  3. RyokuMas
    Facepalm

    " "It's becoming private by default with new APIs that protect user privacy"

    ... because more and more people are learning to use ad/tracking blockers or browsers that block tracking by default.

    TFTFY

  4. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Devil

    So, to resume

    Chrome is adding more APIs which allow remote access to hardware which was previously only available locally and it makes everything private, except when it's not.

  5. Howard Sway Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    How to twist yourself in knots by trying to square an impossible circle....

    "privacy-preserving alternatives to cross-site tracking"

    privacy-preserving surveillance? Nice concept, if you love oxymorons, but you seem to have fundamentally convinced yourself that privacy means something other than what it actually means, just to justify what you want to do.

    "Later, the browser sends an encrypted report to the advertiser"

    No, I do not want my browser sending "reports" about anything I've done to anybody. Especially advertisers. A forlorn hope really when every damn piece of software churned out by companies above a certain size now seems to insist on it, but we should never give up on the idea that we are in control of our machines and not these companies who think they have the divine right of kings over them.

    "Declarative Link Capturing to let installed web apps launch when an appropriate link is clicked"

    Thanks Google for ruining the concept of hyperlinks, by tuning them into crapp launchers that will pop windows up unexpectedly and make users swear at their machines even more. And you'll never know in advance which link will pop up an annoying app.

    "Multi-Screen Window Placement which allows web apps to discover all of the connected displays and control where the window is placed on those screens"

    The big advert we are going to display simply MUST appear on the primary monitor! Preferably all of it!

    "The File System Access API will let web apps read and write to the user's local file system."

    Now you're just taking the piss - you're going to let unauthenticated code write to the file system? Ever heard of viruses and malware? You want complete control of our machines, it's obvious, and you're launching all these new whizzy sounding things to slowly chisel your way in there. But you have become Microsoft circa twenty years ago by doing so, and the general public will start despising you in the same way too.

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: But you have become Microsoft circa twenty years ago

      A nice comparison, but MS of 20 years ago didn't have a tenth of the surveilance capability that Google do. They might have been sniffing around your work pc and your home pc but they weren't watching you communicate with your mates, they weren't following you around the country, they didn't have diagnostic widgets installed on pretty much every website you visit.

      MS have always focussed on the bottom line, that means selling stuff. Google are a much greater threat than MS ever were. They've realised that if you give stuff away you can make it do whatever you like and the punters will lap it up.

    2. ThatOne Silver badge

      Re: How to twist yourself in knots by trying to square an impossible circle....

      > the general public will start despising you in the same way too

      Seriously, Google has already clearly shown they'd rather be rich and hated than poor and loved...

      1. EnviableOne

        Re: How to twist yourself in knots by trying to square an impossible circle....

        yeah, "don't be evil, unless it affects the bottom line"

  6. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Attribution Reporting API

    There is something fundamentally wrong when the browser starts to include functionality purely to support advertising.

    Clearly, Googlies are choosing to not see this

    1. ThatOne Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Attribution Reporting API

      You live to be monetized, get over it.

      I'm so happy I'm already old and probably won't see the advent of the Ubiquitous Advertisement Era. Also that I don't have any children condemned to live in that wonderful world we've left them.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Attribution Reporting API

        I'm pretty sure you have, it's already here.

  7. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    it's the browser that keeps track of the ad conversion

    Um, no.

    It's the browser's job to display what's asked. Telling lowlife scum fine advertisers all about my browsing habits is not part of the contract.

  8. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "less intrusive and more tolerable"

    There is only one solution to this : stop trying to use targetted advertising.

    First of all, you're targetted adverts are laughable. Either you're showing ads on something I just bought, or you're showing ads on stuff other people bought concerning the stuff I just bought.

    True targetted advertising would be you recording that I just bought a light bulb, then six months later, suggesting that I might want to buy a replacement (because light bulbs are shit these days). Or if I buy a lawnmower online (because I've obviously had an aneurysm), then you wait a year and show me ads for lawnmower repairmen in my area.

    If you could actually be arsed to do something useful, I might not mind so much the massive invasion of my privacy, but you can't.

    So just do regular advertising. Stop trying to track me since you can't actually make it meaningful.

    Of course, the hit on your bottom line will be massive, but, to paraphrase, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

    1. Rafael #872397
      Trollface

      Re: "less intrusive and more tolerable"

      Or if I buy a lawnmower online (because I've obviously had an aneurysm), then you wait a year and show me ads for lawnmower repairmen in my area.

      Do you need medicine for your aneurysm? CI1AAL1S XANAXX V1@GRA CANADIAN PHARMACY CHEAP

      (sorry. I agree with your rant but could not resist)

    2. iron Silver badge

      Re: "less intrusive and more tolerable"

      > because light bulbs are shit these days

      Maybe there's a problem with your electrics because light bulbs are amazing these days. They last much, much longer and I rarely replace a bulb these days, when I do its usually one of the slightly older flourescent style rather than the modern LED bulbs.

      1. ThatOne Silver badge

        Re: "less intrusive and more tolerable"

        > Maybe there's a problem with your electrics because light bulbs are amazing these days.

        Sorry to disagree, the new light bulbs are shit for me too. Generally the fluorescent bulbs last about half the time the old incandescent bulbs did, and LED ones, while a little better, are still way too short-lived for their price.

        Heck, I even have an old incandescent bulb which has been working for well over 30 years now. I don't know exactly how much, since it was already here when I moved in 30+ years ago! It's in the main corridor, so it gets a lot of use. Note I think that also kind of answers any questions about the quality of the electricity in my home.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    expanding on that to isolate each cross-site iframe on a web page into its own process

    Ugh. Why not "expanding on that to kill each cross-site process that runs in an iframe", or just killing iframes altogether?

  10. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    So, in summary,

    .. the fox is promising new ways to protect the henhouse, as long as you let him do it from inside the henhouse.

    OK, got it.

    And the answer is still no.

    1. ThatOne Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: So, in summary,

      > And the answer is still no.

      Problem is nobody actually asked us...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    File System Access - the new tracking cookie

    "Additionally this API also makes it possible for websites to get access to some directory without having to first prompt the user for access. This enables use cases where a website wants to save data to disk before a user has picked a location to save to..."

    and these idiots couldn't even make it to the end of the introduction without making it sound like an obviously bad idea. It was a bad idea when IE did it in the 90's, it's still a bad idea today.

    And in answer to the implied question of how do we make a web based word processor that works exactly like an installed app if we can't save files without asking the user, I answer:

    You don't. You don't need to. You never did. We have them already. Stop forcing a square peg in a triangular hole. Your web based knock off will never be better than it could be as the actual app you are faking. It will have endless compatibility problems, increase the scope and impact of security problems, waste electricity, and probably kill penguins.

    Just don't.

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