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teft to Technology@lemmy.worldEnglish • 2 years ago

Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

arstechnica.com

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1.4K
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Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

arstechnica.com

teft to Technology@lemmy.worldEnglish • 2 years ago
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  • cross-posted to:
  • technology@lemmy.world
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  • technology@lemmy.world
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Chrome now directly tracks users, generates a "topic" list it shares with advertisers.
  • @mind@lemmy.world
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    10•2 years ago

    deleted by creator

    • @smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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      65•2 years ago

      There is an issue with monoculture of rendering engines. Developers assume every browser have the same things implemented and start to build around this assumption. Also Google can dictate how the web looks like.

      • @DrDeadCrash@programming.dev
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        30•2 years ago

        Exactly, we’ve seen this previously with Internet explorer.

        • @warmaster@lemmy.world
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          7•2 years ago

          And Netscape before that, it had reached 90% market share.

          • @DrDeadCrash@programming.dev
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            11•2 years ago

            You’re missing the point. Netscape implemented the html standard, they didn’t introduce new, proprietary “features” to gain that market share.

        • @mind@lemmy.world
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          -1•
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          2 years ago

          deleted by creator

          • @DrDeadCrash@programming.dev
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            16•2 years ago

            There are two things to consider here:

            1. Adherence to Standards
            2. Creating artificial “feature” based defacto standards

            Chrome offers adherence to standards as one of their features. But it also introduces new features that look like standards, meant to increase profits for the parent company.

            • @oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip
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              1•2 years ago

              Chrome offers adherence to standards as one of their features. But it also introduces new features that look like standards, meant to increase profits for the parent company.

              VB.Net was exactly that. Difference being Microsoft’s interest was locking companies and governments onto Microsoft’s enterprise products vs Google’s user tracking. Easy, quick internal web app put together in half a day? Would never work right on Netscape. It takes work to make them work to standards.

    • @allalae@orcas.enjoying.yachts
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      48•2 years ago

      Using chromium based browsers keeps power over web standards and such in google’s hands, i.e enforces their ever growing monopoly. So if you want a competitive/fair environment on the web, it’s best to avoid them altogether and stick to firefox or safari.

      • @bernieecclestoned@lemmy.world
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        4•2 years ago

        Aren’t Firefox funded by Google in order to present a false sense of competition in the browser market?

        • @DrDeadCrash@programming.dev
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          20•2 years ago

          Google pays to be the default search in Firefox, it was Bing for a while.

          • @nintendoit@lemmy.world
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            16•2 years ago

            Also it pays to keep mozilla alive.It helps in defending anti-competitive lawsuits.

            Sad to say there are only two engines available for the open web.(Not considering Safari as that is only available on apple)

            • Satelllliiiiiiiteeee
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              2 years ago

              The WebKit engine Safari uses is still open source, Gnome Web and Konqueror use it. It definitely has a small non-apple userbase but it’s an option

      • @gornius@lemmy.world
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        3•2 years ago

        Funny you mention Safari, because you know, Safari is the only browser allowed on iOS. Every other browser has to use Safari to render web pages if they want to be in App Store - once again the only allowed source of packages.

        Safari on iOS is literally worse than IE and Chrome combined.

      • circuscritic
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        -5•
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        2 years ago

        Unfortunately for Android, Chromium based browsers are, at the moment, significantly more secure than Firefox based ones.

        Edit: For the people down voting me, feel free to make a principled stand to avoid Chromium browsers on Android, just understand the risks. Again, specifically for Android. Here’s some reading:

        https://divestos.org/pages/browsers

        • @bug@lemmy.one
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          2•2 years ago

          On Android, Firefox is still less secure than Chromium-based alternatives: Mozilla’s engine, GeckoView, has yet to support site isolation or enable isolatedProcess.

          Sadly it is still a problem. Fortunately there are some pretty good mobile browsers like Cromite available!

          • circuscritic
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            2•2 years ago

            RIP Bromite

            Mulch is pretty solid as well.

    • @Melco@lemmy.world
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      8•2 years ago

      deleted by creator

    • Carlos Solís
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      3•2 years ago

      Unless the developers of other browsers take specific steps, the ad engine will get pulled on the next update of their Chromium engine, that’s the problem.

      • @mind@lemmy.world
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        1•2 years ago

        deleted by creator

        • @Spotlight7573@lemmy.world
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          3•2 years ago

          It’s in Chromium, the other browsers have just disabled/patched it out: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/main/components/privacy_sandbox/privacy_sandbox_prefs.h

          // Un-synced boolean pref indicating if Topics API is enabled.

          inline constexpr char kPrivacySandboxM1TopicsEnabled[] = “privacy_sandbox.m1.topics_enabled”;`

          e.g. Vivaldi:

          https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/heads-up-googles-going-off-topics-again/

          • @mind@lemmy.world
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            1•2 years ago

            deleted by creator

            • @Spotlight7573@lemmy.world
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              2•2 years ago

              They have forked it though? That’s why almost all the other Chromium-based ones don’t have this enabled by default or completely disable it (even if you tried to turn it on).

              If you’re talking about forking the entire project and using it as a base that diverges from what Google does, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Not even Microsoft with their billions had the desire to maintain a totally separate engine anymore and I don’t see the other Chromium-based browsers redirecting efforts from useful things like better UIs, privacy enhancements, etc into just keeping feature/performance parity.

      • J_on_Lemmy
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        -1•2 years ago

        They’re based on Chromium, Not Google’s altered version of it.

        • Carlos Solís
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          4•2 years ago

          Yeah, about that…

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