Item — HN Reader

> One of Google's proposed standards — Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC for short — would eliminate the ability for advertisers to track specific users' web behavior with cookies.

No, Floc will not "eliminate the ability for advertisers to track specific users with cookies", the phase out of third party cookies on Chrome will do that, Google needs something to replace the current tracking method for his ad business and is trying to push Floc to do that. But this are two separate things that OP seems to mix up, Google needs something to keep tracking and is painting the notion that third party cookies can not be phased out without implement Floc before, and is not the case.

3 comments

They're not really separate things: Chrome has said removing third party cookies is dependent on finding good replacements. This goes back at least to https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...:

After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete. Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers, and advertisers, and we have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds, we plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome.

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

> have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds

Well, that’s ominous. Presumably the plan is to close source Chrome or do some DRM thing to prevent sites from rendering if the Privacy Sandbox has been tampered with?

Great.

Reading the rest of the post, they're talking about fingerprinting:

"By undermining the business model of many ad-supported websites, blunt approaches to cookies encourage the use of opaque techniques such as fingerprinting (an invasive workaround to replace cookies), which can actually reduce user privacy and control."

"At the same time, we’re developing techniques to detect and mitigate covert tracking and workarounds by launching new anti-fingerprinting measures to discourage these kinds of deceptive and intrusive techniques"

"Workarounds" is also the wording they use on the Privacy Sandbox page: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb...

("Mitigating workarounds: As we’re removing the ability to do cross-site tracking with cookies, we need to ensure that developers take the well-lit path of the new functionality rather than attempt to track users through some other means. ...")

they are connected by policy, not by technological neccesity.

Sure. But the article isn't wrong to link them.

What do you call it when a company makes a change to its product in one market where it has large market share that drives its competitors in another market out if business? Or put another way, do you really think Google could get rid of third party cookies tomorrow and not get sued out existence?

IANAL, but even I can see that making changes to Chrome that impact advertising is risky even if you ignore Google's own advertising interests. So far they're trying to push things along, but they need buy-in from most of the rest of the advertising industry before they feel they can do anything too radical.

So as far as Google is concerned the elimination of third party cookies (and bounce tracking protection, browser fingerprinting, etc) is definitively tied to something that replaces it. One of those things is FLOC.

> do you really think Google could get rid of third party cookies tomorrow and not get sued out existence?

Considering that ad blocking extensions still exist, yes. The browser (user agent) is supposed to act on the behalf of the user, not the remote server. It's not required to use cookies, display ads or run malicious code.

On what grounds would an ad company sue Google for a change in Chromium that enhances the user's privacy, while they can still display ads (just not track the users as much)?

Look, you can go into Chrome today and disable third party cookies via a setting. There may be a way to create an extension that does this change automatically.

Almost anyone other than Google can make this change without major legal worries, but because Google is in both the ads market and a browser vendor they can't rock the boat.

On what grounds? There are businesses whose only product is targeting information for ads. If they can't get the data they need then they can't produce a product and will go out of business.

Hopefully Mozilla and Apple can start pushing some of the tracking replacement technologies since they don't have their hands tied like Google.

> could get rid of third party cookies tomorrow and not get sued out existence?

I don't think people abusing cookies have a standing as I see it. On what grounds, that their predatory business model is obsolete?

On the contrary, even if many web services are financed by ads, most customers of advertising just care about having the same possibilities to advertise their products. So a more healthy ad world would remain.

"Legal" advertising has eclipsed spam with its toxicity.

> do you really think Google could get rid of third party cookies tomorrow and not get sued out existence?

Not disagreeing, but ad companies attempting to sue Google out of existence would be worth watching.

The trick is the ad companies can use anti-trust to get the governments of the world to foot the bill. See the recent issue with the CMA in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-to-have-key-oversight...

> Federated Learning of Cohorts

What a scary name. Feels like the only thing GAFA use machine learning for, it's pretty worrying...