"When third-party cookies are replaced by FLoC, Google will have a way to track consumers that isn’t available to other companies, which could give Google a steep advantage in the advertising business." [1]
According to the EFF, Google controls the algorithms, and will also be running its implementation and auditing its outputs, a task the EFF describes as "both orwellian and sisyphean". The EFF also notes that "Users and advocates must reject FLoC and other misguided attempts to reinvent behavioral targeting."
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/duckduckgo-solutio...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...
Is there a proof for this claim?
My understanding is that the cohort you belong to is available to any page. Is that not true?
Chrome is closed source, do you trust Google?
So yes, controlling how that number is calculated is infinitely more control than reading it.
It is utter ridiculous to think we need to be tracked from site to site and profiled to this degree.
It would, unfortunately advertising agencies have showcased advertisers that they can hijack focus of an average website visitor with rich graphics irrespective of the context e.g. Say toothpaste ad on a tech blog; And the toothpaste company doesn't care as long as they get a click(even if the conversion is abysmal).
Other side of the story is that the tech blog would find it very hard to get a proper referral link for PC parts they're covering for contextual advertising unless they're of considerable size. Where as getting a banner ad to display what ever it wants is just usually couple of clicks.
As a result, whole Internet is full of rich graphics built by and built for these advertisers making simple text based readable websites an endangered species; Further making the lives of those with accessibility needs miserable.
> For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.
Let me guess, “ads-related resources” are not defined, but in a court case in 5-10 years time it’ll be accidentally revealed that internally Google considers this to include “JavaScript, css, or HTML files”...
> During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources. (Ad Tagging in Chromium explains how Chrome's ad detection mechanism works.)
Ad tagging? https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...
> Ad Tagging works by matching resource requests against a filter list (...) to determine if they’re ad requests. Any requests matching the filter are tagged as ads. Further, requests (and some DOM elements such as iframes) made on behalf of previously tagged scripts are also tagged as ads by the AdTracker. An iframe will be marked as an ad iframe if its url matches the filter list, if tagged script is involved in the creation of the iframe, or if its parent frame is an ad iframe. The main frame of a page will never be tagged as an ad. Any request made within an ad iframe is considered an ad resource request.
I can't find what is included in this filter list, I'm not sure it's open source.
(mandatory disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome nor ads)
This list should be shared with UBlock Origin. Let the people decide what they want IMO.
It's derived from easylist, and (I think) scoped down based on things that actually show up in the top X websites.
I guess this topic is more of a political issue rather than an obvious compatiblity issue, so it's not as clear cut.
But adding special code to deal with buggy clients is something everyone has to do sooner or later.
Not an Apple fanboy, but Safari is a great example of software which has changed its default behavior to prevent creepy things from happening.
Different companies, different incentives
Anyone who runs a site and wants to opt in against a default block should have to take extra action to reduce their visitors privacy, and should be called out for their behavior. As others have noted, there are already plenty of workarounds in use for many reasons... this is a BETTER reason than most.
And when that does happen, Google is famously transparent in its actions and easy to contact to resolve such issues.
(You may detect a little touch of sarcasm above!)
Is it way to cynical to think that coming from the worlds largest advertising company that can’t mean anything except “monetizable web content”...
I am not defending Google behavior, I have no dog in this fight, just sharing. In fact, there was a weird behavior I detected inadvertently last year 2 employers ago where I couldn't load any .dev public internet sites due to preloaded rules that hadn't been updated since before the .dev gTLD was publicly available. Some would load, and others (web.dev in particular) wouldn't load. Anyways yeah this sucks, it seems that any new advancements in web related technologies that could enable new privacy measures are just side stepped by the dark wizards out of Mountain View...
Turns out webplatform.org was discontinued some time in 2015 and put up a notice pointing people at the MDN Web Docs. Then in 2017 Mozilla announced most of the key players (including Google) would now support the MDN Web Docs[0], which still seems to be true except they fired the entire MDN team in 2020[1]. It seems the advisory meetings are still happening and someone is maintaining MDN, but with Mozilla essentially only existing because Google continues to pay the bills, its future seems a lot less certain now.
Meanwhile web.dev makes no mention of MDN and instead mixes discussion of Google's proprietary "experimental" features and Chrome-specific behavior with general advice on "building better websites", duplicating some of the content already covered by the MDN Web Docs' guides section (except this gives them opportunities to cross-market their own interests while also not discussing support of features in other browsers).
I don't think Google is hiding who's behind as the footer literally has the Google Developers logo in it. They are however not acknowledging anything other than Chrome even exists and heavily blurring the lines between Chrome or Google-specific features and stable web standards. Coupled with certain public Google developers continuously chanting "use the platform" while criticizing people for using other web frameworks instead of custom elements, this certainly creates an impression of deception and dishonesty.
[0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/18/mozilla-brings-micr...
[1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90539632/mozilla-vows-mdn-isnt-g...
Tell them it's time for the government to step in and remove Google's ability to run a browser.
Google cannot be allowed to continue running Chrome. They've abused this position time and time again to the detriment of us all.
..and to improve a search engine empire that is arguably the basis for the majority of their ad business and which is already a factual monopoly.
If you successfully avoided giving Google your visitor traffic data so far (by passively avoiding Google analytics, fonts, maps, etc.) then from now on you will have to take active steps to keep their fingers out of your cookie jar.
How is "not using Chrome" not passive?
Does anyone else see FLoC as worse than the current state we're in?