Re:Judge in Google case disturbed that 'incognito' users are...
by munk-a on Friday February 26, 2021 @01:27PM
(#26278023)
I think there are some strong reasons to want marketers to generally be less able to track our online activity and for fingerprinting of the style of Google Analytics or Facebook to not exist but Google is just one participant in this activity, it's particularly ironic that Google Analytics is working to actively counter the work of the Chrome team's incognito mode but I would only really be concerned if those two teams colluded to give Google Analytics a competitive advantage.
I do generally think it's quite fair to view Alphabet as an unreasonably large company that needs to be subjected to anti-trust laws - there are many companies with far too broad a breadth of market control in the modern world. So maybe that's the better tactic, actually dust off our anti-trust laws and break up some of these tech giants.
Re:Judge in Google case disturbed that 'incognito' users are...
by ehsankia on Friday February 26, 2021 @07:56PM
(#26281666)
> since Google gives the option in one product, they should honor it in the other
But it can't, because websites, in theory, aren't and shouldn't be able to detect if someone is in incognito mode. There's sometimes hacky ways, but so far Chrome has patched those as they've come up.
Re:Judge in Google case disturbed that 'incognito' users are...
by numpad0 on Friday February 26, 2021 @01:51PM
(#26278295)
Is act of selling weapons to both side, ethical? Is it automatically unethical, that it is considered a monopoly, that needs to be regulated, universally across industries and contexts? Or is it not?
Re:Judge in Google case disturbed that 'incognito' users are...
by eternalban on Friday February 26, 2021 @02:24PM
(#26278726)
> Selling weapons to both sides and all that.
I wrote software that will track you on the net, not matter where or when. I also wrote the software the gives you the impression that you can do something about tracking.
I think the complaint is that in this case, Google wrote the code that is commonly used to do both. I think the lawyer is arguing that since Google gives the option in one product, they should honor it in the other. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about that argument, but it reminds me of the character Ned from 17 Again: "I wrote the software the prevents people from stealing music. Of course, I also wrote the software that helps people steal music..." Selling weapons to both sides and all that.