Google is Exploring an Alternative to Cookies for Ad Tracking

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/google-is-exploring-an-alternative-to-cookies-for-ad-tracking/?_r=0

by stfu • 13 years ago

91 95 13 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

001sky• 13 years ago

We believe that technological enhancements can improve users’ security while ensuring the Web remains economically viable

Alternatively, it maybe time for some creative destruction.

fear91• 13 years ago

I've used chrome because it was faster than Firefox ( and didn't crash so often ).

I've switched to Firefox a few weeks ago and couldn't be happier. It seems that all the stability issues were resolved.

I urge everyone to do the same.

frank_boyd3• 13 years ago

Google could create an anonymous identifier, tied to users of its Chrome browser on a specific device

That certainly is in the interest of the NSA as well.

duvet4• 13 years ago

I did the same a few months ago. I hesitated to move because I was put off by Firefox's design but I found UX Nightly[1]. A few bugs here and there because it is a nightly build but overall smooth.

[1] https://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/

alecsmart14• 13 years ago

You can download from: http://nightly.mozilla.org

oellegaard2• 13 years ago

What is this UX nightly thing exactly? Is it a fork or the actual future layout?

throwaway9101• 13 years ago

Likewise. I've since been pretty disappointed in Firefox's networking backend. Something in DNS resolution or page-fetching occasionally goes out to lunch and then ... no more loading webpages. I'm on 24.0. I should probably make some effort to actually track this down, but I don't even know where to begin.

Edit: doh! Maybe just network.dns.disableIPv6=true solved it...

oellegaard2• 13 years ago

I just switched today. After installing the omnibar extension and removing the ugly bar in the bottom, if feels just as comfortable as Chrome.

ams6110• 13 years ago

I use Chrome for google apps because it works better. I use Firefox for everything else.

Groxx3• 13 years ago

fwiw the address bar does most of what Chrome's omnibar does, out of the box. It's just a bit hidden because they include the search field by default.

pimeys2• 13 years ago

I've been using Firefox as my main browser for a couple of years now. It's really getting better in every build. And Vimperator is not available for Chrome. Nowadays my biggest reason to stay with Firefox is that I trust Mozilla more than I trust Google.

frank_boyd3• 13 years ago

I trust Mozilla more than I trust Google.

No company working with the NSA can ever be trusted. That only leaves Mozilla.

Plus, are there any other companies that are not-for-profit, like Mozilla? Because this point gives them a huge credit.

TsiCClawOfLight2• 13 years ago

I switched from FF when it was sluggish. Funny, the reason I don't switch back is the opposite of yours: I don't want to miss Vimium... how does Vimperator compare to Vimium?

borplk• 13 years ago

does the scrolling feel a bit weird on Firefox? to me it felt a bit too smooth or animated

falcolas• 13 years ago

You can turn off "smooth scrolling" to fix this. Makes the scrolling feel more responsive to boot.

X4• 13 years ago

I also made the switch after many years with Chrome. Chrome becomes very sluggish when you have too many tabs open, I guess this is why so many people like OneTab.

Today it's normal to have 10+ tabs open, to read the articles and then leave the best ones open for a later usage. That said I can easily have about 400 tabs open in various Tab-Groups, which is a killer feature.

But honestly, one Firefox addon is so important that I believe that it should be a core feature, it's called UnloadTab [1]. This addon frees up the memory unused tabs allocate, after a defined period of time. It helped a friend with a slow 800MHz Laptop with just a little RAM to finally start clicking links without being afraid that the machine locks up.

People who enjoy the TabGroups feature like I do, should definitely checkout the TabGroups Menu addon.

---

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unloadtab/

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabgroups-men...

hrvbr• 13 years ago

Those with speed problems on either Chrome or Firefox should try getting rid of Adblock (Plus). It makes many sites very slow, even though those sites are reasonably fast and fluid without the extension. It's to the point that viewing ads is less irritating.

rz2k• 13 years ago

I too used Chrome because it was simple enough to seem to get out of the way, but Firefox has gotten so much faster that I can't remember how there was an advantage.

Now, I can't stand that there is never a sidebar in Chrome for things like Todoist, and you have that annoying pop-down menu instead. Firefox even lets you use extensions that radically alter the interface, such as the really convenient Tile Tabs[1], without any noticeable slowdowns.

I used to switch back and forth, using Firefox if I was using a extension for some specific task, then back to Chrome for everything else, but now Firefox just never seems to slow down much, so there's no reason.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs

Zoomla• 13 years ago

The worst part of Google software is the included always running updater program which in addition to using unnecessary resources, probably does other unknown tasks (spyware related).

spanishcow2• 13 years ago

The problem are not the cookies. The problem is the tracking and the privacy invasion. I don't want some body following me at every step to know every thing I do using cookies or any alternative method.

Kiro• 13 years ago

Then that's the problem for you, not the problem in general.

mrweasel2• 13 years ago

You're most likely right, in that most people don't care about being tracked, but Google still isn't solving the basic problem, they are just working around the cookie restrictions.

The focus should be on making a profit, while respecting peoples privacy.

spanishcow2• 13 years ago

The problem is with privacy and privacy laws. If you read the laws about privacy (like http://www.ico.org.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electron...) you are going to see that they are targeting cookie-like tracking systems.

It's not a technical problem at all. Tracking is as easy to solve as to put a UID to each device (problem solved).

e.g. Apple some time ago forbid developer to use such an unique id (http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/19/ios-5-deprecates-udid-as-iden...) probably on privacy laws grounds.

jonknee• 13 years ago

This has been talked about for a while and sounds like what Apple does on iOS.

teh• 13 years ago

Does anyone know how the IDs can be anonymous? What's stopping anyone from associating the ID (presumably sent as a header?) with an account on my site?

Is it maybe like an OTP based where google and chrome generate a new ID for every request, opaque to the intermediary but google can correlate them later?

blumkvist• 13 years ago

short answer is that you can never be 100% sure you are remaining anonymous on the internet. The best you can settle with is that you trust the companies operating with the data not to abuse their power and stick to their word.

lnanek22• 13 years ago

In Apple's system, at least, each app gets a different ID for the same user. So supposedly you can't track a user across sites/apps since the user will have a different ID for each.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

I believe it's each set of apps from the same developer. Apple's developer docs say the device identifier changes if a user deletes all of your apps, not just the current one.

anxiousest• 13 years ago

I don't get the alarmist tone of that piece: it's very preliminary, they are consulting with interested parties, building an opt out mechanism.

Oh and Apple already deployed an identical ad id a while ago.

Revisor• 13 years ago

Just because someone else is already doing it doesn't make it right.

Fargren• 13 years ago

I think "it's opt-out" is a very poor excuse. When something of this type is going to be implemented, opt-in should be the default. If you can't convince the people who will be affected by this that they are going to want it, then you are probably in the wrong.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

Wow. "Don't be evil" is really dead and buried isn't it?

NN88• 13 years ago

Doesn't mean we can't start looking for alternatives...

kushti• 13 years ago

It was dead from day 1.

ma2rten• 13 years ago

How exactly is this more evil than a tracking cookie? To me it sounds pretty much the same.

stingraycharles• 13 years ago

The reason, at least here in Europe, is legislation: cookies are written by the website to the user's PC. As far as I understand, this alternative doesn't write anything to a device, thus circumventing the law.

foobarqux2• 13 years ago

They can't be deleted or blocked. They are not confined to one device.

gmjosack• 13 years ago

If it's tied to some "anonymous identifier" in the browser it's also possible to follow you in incognito mode.

bsullivan012• 13 years ago

Duh, it stopped when organic growth stopped. But we were stupid to have believed it in the first place.

Now they are desperate: ads everywhere, penalties everywhere (makes you advertise to replace lost traffic) and so on. They still make north of 95% of their income on ads with all their supposed innovation. I don't trust them at all. On anything. I wonder what Google Search "Quality" has in store for 2013th fourth quarter.

yuhong• 13 years ago

I don't believe most of these claims, but I am linking to this:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3891677&cid=44076497

An important information from the "confidential" studies here for example would be what kind of monitors were tested.

dialtone• 13 years ago

Read the article. This is the same thing as the IDFA but on the Chrome browser. Pretty sure you'll be able to reset its value or turn it off entirely.

Most advertisers don't want to reach you if you don't want to be reached.

officemonkey• 13 years ago

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

bkardell• 13 years ago

the info in this piece about Mozilla following safari suit on third party cookies is out dated i think. https://brendaneich.com/2013/06/the-cookie-clearinghouse/

eps• 13 years ago

I bet that this is a preventive PR diversion for something else.

Google is anything but stupid. Given current post-Snowden climate they surely realize that something as obnoxiuos as built-in browser tracking is going to raise a storm of discontent. But they have decided to realize this information anyway. So they let this stew a little and suggest some alternative, probably as nasty, but it will look mild in comparison, and everyone will be happy. It's your good old anchoring - start with something completely obnoxious so that the thing that you actually want will look benign against it.

lnanek22• 13 years ago

Releasing this information is bad for their consumer uptake, but good for their advertising business, and their advertising business is where they make all their money.

When it comes down to it for consumers, they'll just make it optional to help with complaints, and the masses will never dig down into their preferences to turn it off, so it won't matter that it is optional as far as advertisers are concerned.

fauigerzigerk2• 13 years ago

I don't think appearing extremely shady just to be a little less shady than initially thought is a smart PR move. Yes, it may make the initial shit storm go away, but most people will be left with the impression that Google tried something shady and if they didn't go through with it now they will do so whenever they can sneak it in.

bsullivan012• 13 years ago

I may be wrong but isn't this very limited unless other major browsers adopt it?

I hope Mozilla doesn't cave to their corporate sponsor, and MS will not do just to hurt Google.

sayhello• 13 years ago

This is not news. The article is about 2 weeks old and seems vague about details.

There are more articles on the topic on the net. This identifier has been dubbed "AdID". Read more here: http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/google...

taway2012• 13 years ago

Remember the huge controversy that erupted when Intel wanted to put a program-readable unique serial number into its CPUs (in 1999)?

https://www.schneier.com/essay-187.html

http://slashdot.org/story/00/04/27/1021245/Intel-To-Drop-CPU...

devx• 13 years ago

This is what you get when you let Google track you with ads - less privacy for all:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57606178-83/nsa-tracks-goog...

fauigerzigerk2• 13 years ago

I hope they go with this nonsense. It's almost as easy to kill as cookies and it's going to be a PR disaster, maybe even a legal nightmare for them. Browser/system fingerprinting would scare me a lot more because it doesn't require anything on the client side.

elorant• 13 years ago

In a sense this could be good news. If advertisers were using a different technology rather than cookies that could make our lives as developers a lot easier since we wouldn’t have to bother building alternatives for the lack of cookies in our web apps. Ads are what gave cookies a bad name. If in the years to come cookies can be disengaged from ads that would make users more reluctant to disable them.

mistercow2• 13 years ago

Microsoft or Apple could get away with this, since their browsers are bundled. Google could get away with it on Android.

But on the desktop? Nope. In a world where most users don't know the difference between a search engine and a web browser, Chrome's success relies on the tech savvy (through first person usage and recommendations to friends).

Add this "feature", and roughly 100% of that marketing force gets redirected back to Firefox.

achille• 13 years ago

I thought this was well known, the "cookie" is known as RLZ

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/in-open-for-rlz.html

RLZ gives us the ability to accurately measure the success of marketing promotions and distribution partnerships in order to meet our contractual and financial obligations. It assigns non-unique, non-personally identifiable promotion tracking labels to client products

skymt• 13 years ago

The RLZ string isn't unique per user, and AFAIK it isn't used at all by Google's ad systems. It's used to measure the effectiveness of Google's marketing of their own software.

http://code.google.com/p/rlz/wiki/HowToReadAnRlzString

theklub• 13 years ago

I always thought they should be called crumbs instead of cookies.

patmcguire• 13 years ago

You can do a hack with ETags - that was the first thing I came up with after 30 seconds of brainstorming how you would do it, and it looks like sites are already using them for that purpose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags

logn• 13 years ago

Good thing chromium is open source. I'll make my 'anonymous' GUID simply: googlebot

ksk2• 13 years ago

Well, what could they do? Google is not making enough money :P

I think in 10 years we'll all be buying ad-supported Google PCs for free and they'll have a little window that you cant get rid of - that will show you ads. And probably have eye tracking that will blank the monitor every hour if you dont look at the ad.

Chrome has already turned into a keylogger than can also browse the internet. I remember watching a really old screensavers episode with Patrick Norton discussing how cookies were evil and how websites voilated user privacy by saving their IP addresses !. Hell.. Netscape was sued 13 years ago just because they captured what links you clicked.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/07/37435

MildlySerious• 13 years ago

A computer in 10 years, by Google, that can black out your screen. Google Glass?

ksk2• 13 years ago

What about a google helmet? You cant look away or mute when they show you ads :P

4dl0v3-p34c32• 13 years ago

BTW, if anyone is looking for alternative web browsers that you can truly control, and have some of the defaults set for privacy:

Web Browsers GUI: Dooble, GNU IceCat, Luakit, NetSurf, Web/Epiphany (Galeon), Dillo, Amaya (for authoring), Swiftweasel, Conkeror, Arora, Midori, rekonq, Kazehakase

My GUI picks: xombrero, Uzbl, surf (with tabbed, it is amazing), dwb, jumanji

TUI Web browsers: w3m, elinks, links2, Links, Linkx, lynx, cURL, ed browser, wget

Relevant Threads: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=13661&p=1 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116165

In the future, I wish to have a browser that maps all the cached files, per page you are viewing, with each of the domains, IP address, and the WebSockets connections it makes. Whether it be tree mapped, or tabular, it would be awesome to have a browser monitors all network event and files live, while you are viewing a page, maybe in a tile/window somewhere. For now, we have Jails we can open on the fly, with a new browser instance on each, connected to the custom firewall rules, that opens a page per domain. When done with the page, we get rid of the jail instance.

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