This is a great example of why Google FLoC is not incentive-compatible with consumers nor business owners. Amazon (like Facebook) has a monopoly on ad targeting on their target properties—- properties they own. Google FLoC is Google’s attempt to (further) monopolize their target properties—- the web at large, which Google does NOT own. Google does NOT pay to service the traffic they generate. Google does NOT pay to fulfill consumer orders. Google wants you to think they’re acting in your best interests with FLoC. Maybe if Google offered more free GCloud credits and subsidized conversions they generate, that would be a different story. (Maybe Google could start by paying Wikipedia for some of the traffic they generate). But Sundar wants you to think FLoC is about privacy, because Sundar has said time and time again that Google has lost people’s trust.
Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got.
Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms.
Your suggestion that Google pay sites for the traffic they generate should like that ridiculous News Corp/Australian shakedown of Facebook and Google, which people were only able to justify based on their hatred of the target companies and a willingness to sacrifice the web to their ends.
> (Maybe Google could start by paying Wikipedia for some of the traffic they generate).
How is this different from arguing that sites, such as Google or Facebook, should have to pay to link to news articles? I appreciate and support Wikipedia, but I don’t think Google should be expected to help pay for it (though I’d appreciate if they did as a form of public service).
> (Maybe Google could start by paying Wikipedia for some of the traffic they generate).
What does this mean? You think Google should pay for people who are sent to wikipedia.org after a Google Search? Or you think Google should pay for the information they scrape from Wikipedia and display to users on a Google search results page?
> Maybe if Google offered more free GCloud credits and subsidized conversions they generate, that would be a different story.
I'm pretty happy with all the free youtube content, search engine results, email, storage, word processor, spreadsheet, slide shows, messaging, and more I get
Wow, the bias in this article is unbelievably blatant:
"[Amazon is] preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe"
Compare with, e.g.:
"Amazon is taking steps to protect its user's privacy by blocking Google's heavy-handed overreach in leveraging its Chrome browser to spy on user's personal shopping habits and sell that information to other retailers".
(Note: I'm not saying my rewrite is unbiased. It's not. It's just biased in a different direction to highlight the contrast.)
Yeahhhh, but Amazon makes a ton off their own ad business and is trying to turn everyone's personal devices into a mesh network they own. They don't give af about user privacy.
What I don't get about the reporting on this topic: Isn't all this opt-out stuff just necessary while Google is testing FLoC and it'll be opt-in(!) after it leaves Origin Trial phase? Or is this Google employee straight up lying* here? https://twitter.com/Log3overLog2/status/1384337637763387394?...
I don't think he's straight up lying, but I do think the truth is probably more than what he's saying.
Like perhaps using AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Sign In, etc, will include a buried implied "opt in" for your site at some point.
Google is quite good at rolling out changes slowly enough to spread out any outrage. Watching the progression of ads take over their SERP pages, it was very slow and subtle. No ads, then just sidebar ads. Then one ad below the first one or two results, then above them, eventually leading to some pages with nothing but ads above the fold. Over many, many years.
All of the reporting is ignoring this fact because everyone who's commenting on this issue is ignoring this fact in favor of their own assumptions about how the platform works. "Opt-out for testing, opt-in for production" has been the design from day one, but a lie can run 'round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
(And while the author does say "Best guess", this isn't just an empty Google promise—if this changes, it would change the entire tenor of consensus-based standardization discussions that are happening here, and significantly lower Google's standing in the web standards community, which they care a lot about)
"Our best guess". The author of those tweets literally admits that they don't know what will happen. Personally, I'm not as inclined as them to give Google the benefit of the doubt until the absolute last minute.
I know there is skepticism that the opt-out http header is useful. Mostly because the places deploying it wouldn't call the floc API anyway.
But, it is certainly useful to publicly see floc sentiment. As far as I know, Amazon hasn't said anything publicly about floc, but now we know they are aware and doing something about it.
I saw that GitHub and The Guardian also rolled out the header.
Waiting for a website tracking who all has opted out to pop up.
I think the header also has value as a "last resort" to catch any unintentional use of floc if your org doesn't want it.
As far as I understand the explicit call to FLOC will only be a requirement once it has gained traction. Right now Google is still using whatever they can to make it viable, so explicitly opting out is necessary for anyone who wants to be on the safe side.
We blocked FLoC at my company because we couldn’t see the benefit in allowing it. If, in the future, an obvious value shows itself, then we’ll re-evaluate. But at the moment there’s only a business and reputational cost to allowing Google to harvest our users’ data.
We blocked it as well. Since we deal with health data, it seemed unethical to allow Google to add people to the "possibly sick" bucket and use that as part of their marketing.
Why do we believe the Googs will actually honor this flag? If it's just an HTTP header, the browser can be made to just act like it's not there. All of these "flags" are essentially honor policy level things (just like robots.txt), but if the thing is not even told to look for the flag, there's nothing stopping from doing exaclty what is being asked not to do.
I'm curious, with third-party cookies being fased out, and alternatives like FLoC being met with resistance, could this drastically cut the size of Google's revenue's down? If the ads can no longer be accurately targeted, I imagine that would mean the main value of AdWords is no more, and that's the foundation that entire company is built on.
Just don’t use chrome ?
Or if you really like chrome
Use a chromium browser that won’t implement cohorts , why bother feeding it disingenuous data instead of just not feeding it anything ?
> There is a caveat regarding FLoC blocking on Whole Foods pages, however. While other Amazon-owned domains mentioned here that block FLoC do so using Google’s recommended approach involving sending a response header from HTML pages, Whole Foods blocking employs a tactic that sends an opt-out header from Amazon analytics requests.
What do they mean here, that the actual page request does not send the "no FLoC" HTTP header but the requests from Analytics do?
Amazon has a pretty big advertising platform too , I think they’ll try to spread this header on all the websites that use their ad platform.
So they might be trialing it this way because of that, to help boost their ad platform and hinder floc , so that google cannot drop third party cookies that easily , as floc’s on browser processing makes google the defacto judge on what information do they add into floc identifiers and what they do not , meanwhile themselves getting all the unrestricted data from their browsers separately.
By hindering mass scale adoption of floc , they’re trying to delay dropping of third party cookies , to slow down google from getting an advantage over them.
Atleast that’s what I think , they might be testing it for other reasons, only an Amazon exec can answer it specifically.
It's all pointless, it will win out eventually because it makes sense and Google isn't about to stop tracking you regardless of FLoC. All it does is disincentivizes smaller players from doing their own tracking which you'll have no control over anyway.
Personally I don't see depersonalized targeting as a bad thing. Better than advertising dish washers to people who just bought a dish washer or some such nonsense.
I got a great one from eBay yesterday; Because you bought Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5, we thought you might like this; Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5.
Excuse my rant about this free piece of content, but this is one of those sites that render the reading experience horrifying with giant subscribe and menu bars. It feels like reading something on a smartwatch is more easier.
I never understood what FLoC offers to users directly (rather than to advertisers) -- FLoC requires a user to opt into it, right? Why would I do this as a user, what incentive does Google give me?
Amazon just wants a cut of Google's profits, just like Apple takes its cut for the Safari search deal. The fact that this has become public means that Google didn't foresee this.
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] choppaface|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomComb|4 years ago|reply
Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms.
Your suggestion that Google pay sites for the traffic they generate should like that ridiculous News Corp/Australian shakedown of Facebook and Google, which people were only able to justify based on their hatred of the target companies and a willingness to sacrifice the web to their ends.
[+] [-] alsetmusic|4 years ago|reply
How is this different from arguing that sites, such as Google or Facebook, should have to pay to link to news articles? I appreciate and support Wikipedia, but I don’t think Google should be expected to help pay for it (though I’d appreciate if they did as a form of public service).
[+] [-] Permit|4 years ago|reply
What does this mean? You think Google should pay for people who are sent to wikipedia.org after a Google Search? Or you think Google should pay for the information they scrape from Wikipedia and display to users on a Google search results page?
[+] [-] snug|4 years ago|reply
I'm pretty happy with all the free youtube content, search engine results, email, storage, word processor, spreadsheet, slide shows, messaging, and more I get
[+] [-] canadianfella|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lisper|4 years ago|reply
"[Amazon is] preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe"
Compare with, e.g.:
"Amazon is taking steps to protect its user's privacy by blocking Google's heavy-handed overreach in leveraging its Chrome browser to spy on user's personal shopping habits and sell that information to other retailers".
(Note: I'm not saying my rewrite is unbiased. It's not. It's just biased in a different direction to highlight the contrast.)
[+] [-] fastball|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonvorhe|4 years ago|reply
* I don't suspect he his.
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
Like perhaps using AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Sign In, etc, will include a buried implied "opt in" for your site at some point.
Google is quite good at rolling out changes slowly enough to spread out any outrage. Watching the progression of ads take over their SERP pages, it was very slow and subtle. No ads, then just sidebar ads. Then one ad below the first one or two results, then above them, eventually leading to some pages with nothing but ads above the fold. Over many, many years.
[+] [-] nightpool|4 years ago|reply
(And while the author does say "Best guess", this isn't just an empty Google promise—if this changes, it would change the entire tenor of consensus-based standardization discussions that are happening here, and significantly lower Google's standing in the web standards community, which they care a lot about)
[+] [-] shkkmo|4 years ago|reply
Not straight up lying, but downplaying concerns without actually being able to lay those concerns to rest.
[+] [-] teawrecks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seoaeu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
But, it is certainly useful to publicly see floc sentiment. As far as I know, Amazon hasn't said anything publicly about floc, but now we know they are aware and doing something about it.
I saw that GitHub and The Guardian also rolled out the header.
Waiting for a website tracking who all has opted out to pop up.
I think the header also has value as a "last resort" to catch any unintentional use of floc if your org doesn't want it.
[+] [-] josefx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robin_reala|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yabones|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deskamess|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanhunter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannyw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabbo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gman83|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WORMS_EAT_WORMS|4 years ago|reply
Is there a way we can just obfuscate / ruin our data with them?
Like a tool or browser extension I can run that clicks / visits a bunch of random links and totally trashes which "cohort" Google thinks I belong in.
I'd pay for this more than paying to opt-out. Then serve me all the ads you want.
[+] [-] flixic|4 years ago|reply
https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html
[+] [-] teitoklien|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewmol|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hahahasure|4 years ago|reply
Also there's an issue that bots are detected easily.
[+] [-] Arjuna144|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EMM_386|4 years ago|reply
What do they mean here, that the actual page request does not send the "no FLoC" HTTP header but the requests from Analytics do?
What happens in this scenario?
[+] [-] teitoklien|4 years ago|reply
So they might be trialing it this way because of that, to help boost their ad platform and hinder floc , so that google cannot drop third party cookies that easily , as floc’s on browser processing makes google the defacto judge on what information do they add into floc identifiers and what they do not , meanwhile themselves getting all the unrestricted data from their browsers separately.
By hindering mass scale adoption of floc , they’re trying to delay dropping of third party cookies , to slow down google from getting an advantage over them.
Atleast that’s what I think , they might be testing it for other reasons, only an Amazon exec can answer it specifically.
[+] [-] xaduha|4 years ago|reply
Personally I don't see depersonalized targeting as a bad thing. Better than advertising dish washers to people who just bought a dish washer or some such nonsense.
[+] [-] alias_neo|4 years ago|reply
Hmm.
[+] [-] rytrix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papito|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ayesh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amilios|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akomtu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joemaller1|4 years ago|reply
Gut punch
[+] [-] delduca|4 years ago|reply