Web.dev by Google

Re:Web.dev by Google by jopsen on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:55PM (#18436763)

https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...

I'm no lawyer, but I read that as it is not used for tracking users.

(full disclosure: I work at Google, on something unrelated)

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Re:Web.dev by Google by PavlovsCat on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @05:03AM (#18439890)

I see no explanation given why an asset that never changes would need to be requested once a day, and they clearly state they do record it.

> We only [sic] see 1 CSS request per font family, per day, per browser. Google Fonts logs records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is kept secure.

I read that as what's written there. It's for tracking. Tracking popularity is still tracking.

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Re:Web.dev by Google by jopsen on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @10:21AM (#18441593)

> Tracking popularity is still tracking.

Tracking usually refers to tracking users, which as I read the FAQ isn't what it's for.

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Re:Web.dev by Google by PavlovsCat on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @02:49AM (#18448268)

They take and keep the tracking data. What they say they use it for doesn't change that. If they simply incremented a counter the bit about "keeping access to the data secure" would make no sense.

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Re:Web.dev by Google by philtar on Monday November 12, 2018 @06:28PM (#18436958)

Do you have a guess why those assets are not cached more aggressively?

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Re:Web.dev by Google by jopsen on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @10:28AM (#18441645)

As I read the FAQ, the actual font files are aggressively cached. It's only the CSS files that links to the font files that aren't cached forever.

Probably to allow for updates and estimate popularity, with low overhead assuming CSS files are small.

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Re:Web.dev by Google by fantyoon on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:26PM (#18437263)

This is a complete guess but I suppose one request everyday would be enough to get atleast some idea of how popular any given font is. The page says its to keep them updated but I highly doubt that would be the reason.

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Re:Web.dev by Google by outside1234 on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @12:14AM (#18438778)

So it’s tracking then

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Re:Web.dev by Google by jefftk on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @07:00AM (#18440323)

While I don't know anything about fonts stuff, successful execution of the ad tag leads to an ad request, and this happens on every page view which has the script and not just the ones where the file has fallen out of cache. So there's no additional useful information Google would get from a low cache lifetime for the script.

The script request is to a cookiless domain for performance, unlike the ad request, so there's not even much useful information on that request.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, on ads JS, and I previously worked on mod_pagespeed. Not speaking for Google, just myself.)

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