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Google Adds To Mozilla's Push For 'Do Not Track'
AndyAndyAndyAndy writes "In a morning blog post, Google announced the release of a Chrome plug-in called 'Keep My Opt-Outs,' which hopes to block all tracking cookies. Interestingly, it is released as open-source with the hopes that it will gain quick deployment on non-Chrome browsers and find a robust foothold against ads. The story is also covered at Computerworld, which has broader insight into the issue, looking at Google, Mozilla and Firefox, and seems to indicate more rapid change is looming — potentially from the FCC itself."
Why don't we just skip to the part where everyone has enabled this feature.
You think your cookies and tracking are harmless, or even good, but as you can see, very powerful backlashes form which will hurt everyone because you abused your privelege, and cross-site cookies tracking is a privelege. I understand the need for advertising tracking to improve the value of the ad to the ad buyer and to me, the ad "consumer". But considering it's becoming a hodge-podge and used to make people very uncomfortable, there was an inevitible push back.
You lost the Javascript/flash wars because you allowed abusive banner ads. Sure, you got a quick hit for a year or two, but for how long until AdBlocker has become de rigeur for the heavy Internet browser? So by trying to be too flashy and too in your face, you lost all right to use Javascript/flash for your ads.
Now you are losing the cookie battle too.
Just try not to be evil and respect people's wishes. Is it really that hard? Really?
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
If I were google, I'd be pretty psyched to be the only ad provider who can triangulate from search to ad delivery. Thats a real coup in terms of unique analytics for them. Between every page that has their ads on it, every site that uses their site analytics and every request that has google.com as the launch point (and access to http-referer information across all of these....it'd be hard to imagine an analytics company coming close to competing.
There are many more desserts than just cookies.
They are not on the same page. Blocking cookies is pointless. Robust all-knowing behavior tracking occurs on the server side. By implementing a header flag, Mozilla is ahead of the game. That flag covers any kind of tracking currently used or to be deployed in the future by asserting a generic end-user request always and uniformly. Blocking cookies addresses an obsolete tracking mechanism.
You're a monster!
Its not only good press and taking advantage of the fact that people are lazy and won't do it ... It also gives them an easy bit of legal help.
If they make a bunch of tools available to protect your privacy then you don't have nearly as much room to bitch about the tracking since you do have a way to limit the tracking.
Second, if no one uses the tools and someone starts trying to push legislation through to make tracking more legally difficult, google and other online advertisers can jump in and scream 'we gave them tools and no one used them, the people don't want this!' ... and it'll be REALLY hard to argue their point when they have proof that the general population doesn't care enough to use the tools.
I won't call you cynical, just realistic and wise.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
It's also in Google's interests to implement weak voluntary controls rather than FTC-mandated strict controls that would more-directly impinge on Google's bottom line.
An FTC ruling which dictates something along the lines of "You must default everybody to opted-out of all advertisements, and allow them to opt back in if they wish to," pretty much destroys Google's business overnight. "No need for the FTC to take action, since the browser makers have already provided a system to allow users to opt out of advertisements if they wish to," hurts a lot less.
And they expire before 2038
So does grandma.
Didn't they undergo a massive cave-in to special interests?
We can argue all day about that, but it doesn't really matter since the organization that is putting on pressure for do-not-track mechanisms is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), not the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that recently adopted open internet ("net neutrality") rules that have been panned by some neutrality advocates as "worse than nothing" in terms of restricting ISP abuses and by some ISPs and Tea Party types as a totalitarian takeover of the internet by government.