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A comment on Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web browsing. Parent comment

Re:Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web bro... by ogre_codes on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:40AM (#26330813)
> If the browser is supposed to send the information, what are they going to do with those of US who do not use Chrome?

What would stop them from implementing FLoC in the cloud for non-Chrome users? Fundamentally, where the data is stored is meaningless. So long as they are pushing everything through this same "FLoC" model, they are claiming they won't be tracking individuals.

So on Chrome, FLoC is local—your own browser working against you—for Safari and FireFox, FLoC is cloud based.

So long as the web sites in question are running Google Analytics, they still have the software on your system on a huge number of sites.

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Re:Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web bro... by jefftk on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @01:00PM (#26332099)
> for Safari and FireFox, FLoC is cloud based

This would require being to identify a user when they are on many different sites (cross-site tracking), which all the major browsers intend to prevent.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

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Re:Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web bro... by ogre_codes on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @01:26PM (#26332440)
First, you have to understand that Google as a company has lost all credibility in much of the community. There have been too many issues like this one where Google gives you the impression they are turning off tracking... but doesn’t actually stop tracking you.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

There was also the Do not Track setting, which Google ignored. So in my book (and I’m not alone here), anything coming from Google is taken with a huge grain of salt.

For some time, there has been a sort of cat and mouse game between advertisers and browser makers. Do you know Google isn’t using fingerprinting to identify us? Or just IP or some other means?

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Re:Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web bro... by jefftk on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @01:41PM (#26332607)
> Google as a company has lost all credibility in much of the community

What I'm saying is Safari [1], Firefox [2], and Chrome [3] are planning technical mitigations that would prevent anyone from implementing a cloud-based FLoC. Even if you don't believe Chrome, it wouldn't be possible in Safari or Firefox.

> Do you know Google isn’t using fingerprinting to identify us? Or just IP or some other means?

https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-fir... has "once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products" and "our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers" which seem pretty clear to me? Additionally, I work in client-side ads infra, and I'm pretty sure I would know if Google were fingerprinting users to target ads.

[1] https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/

[2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Anti_tracking_policy#1._Cr...

[3] https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb...

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