Comment by bigyikes
3 years ago
I heard about this the other day and didn’t think much of it.
I got the actual update today on my work laptop and… just wow. How did the folks at Google ship this with a straight face? The changeboarding modal basically lies to your face.
I’ve always felt a little weird about Google’s tracking, but this takes it to another level. Creepy as heck.
> How did the folks at Google ship this with a straight face?
You have been doing 60-70 hours a week for a few years at startups that never took off. You tried to go into some big companies but got rejected several times. You managed to pass the first screening to the process at being hired at Google. You go through all the process. It’s long and tiring. Somehow you went through it after several weeks and so many steps. After several years in your career of not so successful job/startups this is like a huge thing. You can say to all your family and friends and girlfriend that you work at Google. The pay is great but the work is bad. They ask you to code more stuff to track people into Chrome. You evaluate what quitting would be like and what other opportunities like this you could have. And then I guess they are like hmm no. Let’s code this things from now on.
I’m convinced at least 75% of devs consider working at a FAANG to be the absolute apex of a career, regardless of what’s worked on. Which, to me, says it’s purely about prestige.
It’s impossible to say for sure, but there’s a certain pervasive collective worship of these employers that will just not quit.
If by “prestige” you mean “enough money to work for 4 years and retire anywhere that’s not the Bay Area and never work another day” then yea, it’s prestige.
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Is there? I'm happy to not be making hiring decisions these days but if I was I'd definitely think twice about hiring somebody who was ok spending their days making the web worse.
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> there’s a certain pervasive collective worship of these employers that will just not quit
That's my observation as well. And I think this applies especially to Google: for some reason it still has the reputation of this cool tech company here on HN, even though it's an advertising and user tracking/profiling company at this point, and there is really nothing "cool" about it anymore. But criticize Google on HN and you'll get downvoted really quickly.
The collective worship is the set of people who (1a) have worked there previously and (1b) didn’t hate it, or (2) want to work there in the future.
It’s a pretty large absolute number of people, although thanks to section 1 clause b, it’s growing smaller.
YMMV, but “people who worship recent FAANG employment” can be a filter that’s positive to apply when seeking employment.
I think this would actually be bad for their careers. I believe this is all open source and in public and you would get really bad rep for building this. If it was me I would ask for a transfer to a different team.
Nah. You do this kind of dirty work at Google for a few years. Then you say that "after working at Google, you have decided to fight for users" or some other noble goal.
Now you have it both ways. You have the resume prestige of working at Google and the faux prestige of being a "virtuous person" who is willing to forgo the comfy Google life to "do what is right."
devs should definitely have their names on the products they build. same for PMs
> The pay is great but the work is bad.
In just about any other context this is called a bribe. But you're right. If that person doesn't do it, someone else will.
There are also a lot of Googlers who got in on their first or second try and genuinely do not understand end-users, do not WANT to understand end-users, and thus are very happy to implement this stuff. Also PMs who are extraordinarily metrics-focused and will buy the koolaid 100%
It's a government mandated bullshit as a replacement for third party cookies.
When all other browsers disable third party cookies, everything is fine. Apple for example has disabled it for years. When Google does it, antitrust regulators fear that this could benefit Google ads more than non-Google ads. Hence this bullshit to "restore competitiveness" between Google and non-Google ad networks.
My recommendation is to both disable third party cookies and this new thing. You don't need either of them.
> It's a government mandated bullshit
This is definitely what Google would like you to believe. Considering indeed all other browsers have killed third party cookies, Google legally very well could as well. But they'd love you to believe they must provide a way to invade your privacy.
The issue regulators had was Google retaining special access to user tracking, they have no problem with Google removing their own ability to track as well. Of course, that doesn't buy Larry and Sergey's next yacht or private island remodel.
> The issue regulators had was Google retaining special access to user tracking, they have no problem with Google removing their own ability to track as well.
I don't think you understand the issue. Without third party cookies Google still has search ads while adtech competitors without a search engine are decimated. That's the antitrust concern.
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> It's a government mandated bullshit
Who says that, google?
To make an analogy, don't believe any EU country government when they blame some EU directive for a new law.
The CMA. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62052c52e90e0...
Some government regulators used to primarily focus on natural persons (i.e. citizens/consumers) and prioritize them above all else.
Then neo-liberalism took over and they took a page out of the US’ playbook, and started prioritizing businesses.
But unlike in the US they aren’t comfortable outright stating that they’re prioritizing business interests over consumer interests, so instead they do this weird thing in their communications where they act like they’re standing up for small businesses. Problem however is that their definition of “small” business is everything below a trillion euro market cap.
It’s kind of jarring really, to hear them talk about having to protect those poor advertisers, like it’s some UNICEF donation ad.
> My recommendation is to both disable third party cookies and this new thing. You don't need either of them.
then you will see random low quality ads instead of something you may be interested in
Oh my god, how will I live my life knowing the parts of the web pages I tune out give pennies to certain companies instead of others. It's FOMO for ads!
Oh wait, I use uBlock Origin, so this doesn't affect me at all! I'm stealing all that data from servers that give it to me when doing an unathenticated GET.
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That's a fine choice by me. In the rare scenarios I turn off my ad blocker, I want to see generic badly targeted ads, not ads precisely engineered to cause me to make a purchase or change my worldview.
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I'd rather not see ads for things I may be interested in. Do you see why?
We could have privacy protection as the default, and then you can opt-in to sharing your personal life with hundreds of companies so they can show you more relevant ads. Since everyone loves relevant ads, they'd be sure to opt-in, right?
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But if I block ads in my browsers, at the router level through Ad Guard, route all my personal devices through Tailscale, and use Firefox then I won't see those either.
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Because they don't get to kill third party cookies without shipping it.
Context? That whole project was kind of a cluster when I was involved with it, how does this help? Or is it more, without a replacement for 3p cookie tracking they couldn't break it (useful uses of 3p cookies be damned)?
Regulators in the US, EU and UK have made it clear that Chrome can't remove support for 3p cookies without building a replacement feature that works for non-Google ad networks.
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When I saw that dialog, I didn't know which button to click. I knew I didn't want to share the topics I am interested in or have personalized / more relevant ads of any kind, but the text was so confusion and mixing so many things (like activate the privacy feature when in fact you are activating the tracking feature).
In the end, I reverted to clicking the non-primary button (which you are not supposed to click) and checked in the settings everything was in order.
Maybe they are talking a leaf out of Zuck's playbook. Two steps forward and one step back conditional on backlash. Reddit did this recently. Outrage can be managed until things cool down.
I’m thoroughly impressed how HN also buried this story so quickly; usually something so dramatic would stick on the front page for days. Speaks a lot about Google-biases in the content moderation of HN.
The fix sounds easy to me.
Switch to a better browser.