How is this different than today, where many sites use js from google, either as a cdn or part of the ads infrastructure? I guess you can block some of those, but blocking the jquery provided by google's CDN isn't going to work too well.
(And further, what kind of nefarious thing do you fear Google will do? How likely is it that they will do so, in your opinion?)
It's different because it's a requirement. nytimes.com is moving to phase out all third-party advertising data, so presumably they could design their page such that it only accesses their resources.
With a signed exchange, that would allow them to nicely compartmentalize and contain privacy to their site, if they aren't required to load and run some Google supplied JavaScript. The argument that Google already knows that someone visited the page so it's no big deal is not compelling, since there is a big different in knowing someone clicked to visit a page, and having carte blanche over loading your own code on the page in question.
Can you include the AMP rquiers JS inline such that it implement an AMP spec version, or do you need to load it externally? If you can supply it inline, that's great, and what people would want (as long as it doesn't load additional third party resources). If you can't then you're providing Google with an extra level of control that's not really needed, and that's what people are against.
> (And further, what kind of nefarious thing do you fear Google will do? How likely is it that they will do so, in your opinion?)
If we go forth only considering what we think people will do, and not limiting what they can do, we're destined to be upset with the outcome. If not from Google itself, then in twenty years when someone buys Google, or Google sells off a division that houses information, or there's a breach and it's exposed, or some other company rides on Google's coattails and uses the same precedence to get data but is less trustworthy.
The point is that some people don't want to share this information, and would choose not to do so if there was an easy way to tell when it was being gathered. Fighting against new methods that seek to make it implicit instead of explicit is the only real way to do that.
1: https://www.axios.com/new-york-times-advertising-792b3cd6-4b...
Then I'd direct you to Gregable's comment (who is a person who actually works on AMP) that
> the AMP project is actively working to move the origin (control/host) of the AMP Javascript to the publisher's own domain, as well as allow a version served on an origin owned by the OpenJS Foundation, rather than Google.
So while this isn't supported yet, the people working on it do ant that.
> If we go forth only considering what we think people will do, and not limiting what they can do, we're destined to be upset with the outcome. If not from Google itself, then in twenty years when someone buys Google, or Google sells off a division that houses information, or there's a breach and it's exposed, or some other company rides on Google's coattails and uses the same precedence to get data but is less trustworthy.
I'm unconvinced by such slippery slope arguments, given that the pushback were Google to do something like inject nefarious js would be swift. They've had the ability to do so for, well, 20 years now. They haven't yet.
Good! For what it's worth, I'm slightly pro AMP based on the idea, I'm just not entirely happy with the current implementation. Fixing it to be less dependent on a Google resource is a good change, IMO.
I use copious Google services, such as Gmail and Drive, and Hangouts (or whatever it's called this week), and Android, but I'm leery of becoming more dependent on Google. It's to everyone's benefit if there's healthy competition between all parties, and to my personal benefit if I don't find that someone's gotten access to my google account and literally everything is open to them (which is why I always use a username/password combination for sites I create accounts for instead of linking my Google account... even if I know my email is @gmail.com so it's of limited use, for now. Baby steps).
> I'm unconvinced by such slippery slope arguments, given that the pushback were Google to do something like inject nefarious js would be swift. They've had the ability to do so for, well, 20 years now. They haven't yet.
First, it doesn't have to be nefarious. The bar for Google deciding they deserve analytics for content they "serve" is much lower than the bar for actually doing something illegal. I prefer not to place options to do what I consider the wrong thing for business gain in front of companies when it can be helped. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and all that.
Second, that was a single one of the scenarios I listed. The others notably did nt rely on Google doing or not doing the right thing, because the decision is no longer in their hands. If Google is no longer the authority deciding (because they are gone, or have a new parent, or the data was taken), what Google would choose to do is irrelevant. That's why it's important to some people to reduce the information being collected. It's impossible to know what it will eventually be used for in the long term, so the prudent thing is to limit it, and/or compartmentalize it (that is, maybe I'm happy with nytimes.com knowing where else I clicked in their article, but I would prefer Google only know I loaded that first article).
It's about power dynamics. If you get a consolidation of power, that's going to be open to abuse. Maybe not now, maybe in the future, who knows. Democratic systems have checks and balances in the public domain. Google doesn't have this.
as we don’t have proof that google did not do nefarious things, we don’t have proof that they haven’t. with such monopoly and power distrust is useful thing.
We do have proof that they don't do the specific nefarious things being discussed here: injecting nefarious js into otherwise useful things. That's easy to determine.
Well, the headline is one good example. That google controlled JS is EXACTLY how they removed access to the original URL...on somebody else's page that isn't theirs. "Signed exchanges" doesn't fix that either. It's also how they hijack the back button and swipe events for carousel navigated pages.
No, the Google AMP cache adds the header bar. That isn't added by the Google controlled AMP js. Let me repeat this: The AMP js didn't change. Google's AMP cache implementation changed. (if you disagree with this, please post the diff of the AMP js that removed the url bar, the js is opensource at [0])
> "Signed exchanges" doesn't fix that either.
Yes it does, in two ways:
1. It would prevent Google from mucking with the embedded page at all, like they do now.
2. It would remove the need for me to have the url redirect, since the url bar would point to the original site.