Hacker News Reader

Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. Next up, the Adsense and Android antitrust cases. How do I know? I googled it: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust-idUSKB...

View on HN

> How do I know?

Umm, it says so in the article, the googling was unnecessary.

At this point they are also apparently abusing their capcha. You use it from Firefox, solve like 3 different captcha, my most recent experience with Cloudflare. Use it from Chrome, instant check after failing a login. And it's from the same IP that has done it over and over again. If you were the least bit intelligent you would not do this... unless you were trying to make the user experience of other browsers worse than yours by abusing a commonly offered service that you offer for free. Going forward this is worrying for other Google services as well and their cloud offering. Are they going to add a delay in responding to certain browsers, I dunno. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation, I dunno

I guess they assume, if you're actually loading from Chrome, you're probably not a bot? They're probably checking for more than just a simple user agent?

That said, as far as I know (I'll keep an eye on it), I haven't always received an instant check in Chrome when dealing with a captcha.

Now try the same thing with cookies deleted in both browsers. Or in incognito/private mode.

They do a lot of profiling. Like if you're logged into a google account at the time, and other session checks. Perhaps your browsers had different cookies/localStorage, which could explain it.

Say that this is true. Google can only use its own data from its own browser to improve the web and penalizes everyone who is not using their browser. The result is the same. Google has a monopoly on your experience of the web... because it is optimized for users of its browser.

> Say that this is true. Google can only use its own data from its own browser to improve the web and penalizes everyone who is not using their browser.

No, it also works on other browsers. I know because I exclusively use Safari and I encounter this one-click-captcha thing regularly.

The thing is it only works on browsers you use regularly. It looks like they are analysing/tracking the behaviour of your browser (using google ads and other assets embedded in web pages) and determine if your browsing behaviour matches that of a human.

Okay say that this is true, then if you want any sort of decent user experience you MUST let Google track you and analyze your behavior. So many ways for Google to win. So many ways for the user to lose. I do run a bunch of stuff on my Firefox to prevent that, perhaps that's a reasonable explanation as to why.

Google owns the server, Google owns the client, Google owns DNS, Google owns domains, Google even owns > 50% of mobile. It's way too much ownership under one roof.

Yes that is pretty much the entire idea. If you don't let them track you, they don't have a reasonable assurance that you're a real legit non-malicious human being. So you get to fill out the actual captcha.

Pretty sweet deal, yeah? 99% of the population gets an easy checkbox, and all the people who care just need to fill out some questions to prove they're not a bot. It's not like you're blocked from using the form.

99% of the population. Last time checked significant portion of the population uses various tools including ad-blockers, and other privacy tools to decrease their online foot print. So that point is wholly incorrect. You mean significant portion of the population who does not mind being tracked constantly by Google. Most likely the most unsavy masses. Not anyone that cares about their privacy.

I use an adblocker and various other privacy tool (uMatrix user here). I still get one-click checkbox most of the time. I'm logged into my google account.

> Last time checked significant portion of the population uses various tools including ad-blockers, and other privacy tools to decrease their online foot print.

In what alternate reality ?

"PageFair 2017 ad blocking report: Usage up 30%"

Whether or not that number is correct, it's definitely a significant portion of the population doing it.

30% from what starting base? If the number was relatively small to begin with, 30% growth doesn't really mean much.

Oh, I'm sorry, I misread that title as "up to", because I viewed it right after a slightly older headline saying "IAB Study Says 26% of Desktop Users Turn On Ad Blockers". So go with 26% as a possibly-high number. I very much doubt the number is under 10%. It's a lot of people.

It isn't always a "just fill out some questions" issue; some of the captas they show are essentially impossible for humans. The one Google service I can't avoid (well, maps also but I can't reember a problem there) is Google Scholar and I occasionally get the almost impossible captchas there (I think I got one out of at least six I tried on different occasions). Logging in avoids the issue (and tends to fix it for a while without logging in... I think an IP address range thing in my case).

The worst part is when you need to prove to Google who you are when already logged in to a (non-Google) online store that you have purchased from previously. That is just rediculous and seems to be getting more common. At least those are not impossible, but still. I do not know if Google has anything to do with promoting that use but if they do they should be held responsible for that (as well as the businesses that use such things).

Obviously it's up to the sites to decide when to present a captcha.

In some sense, sure, thus my use of the word promote. Depending on what (if anything) Google does to promote that it might be antitrust related.

Nothing. It's trivial to sign up and implement recaptcha, I've done it several times. You just get some code that shows a captcha.

Yes, you must. Or you will encounter the normal annoying captcha like I do and I don't complain because it's my own decision to not be tracked and I know there are consequences for profiling and live with it.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, either you are for privacy and should expect the hassles this create or you want the convenience and have to pay with your privacy for it.

I don't really understand why are you pressing so much on this issue, you have choices with tradeoffs, as most things in life.

I don't really understand why are you pressing so much on this issue

You're acting like these are immutable laws of the universe rather than properties of google's design decisions.

I think your point wouldn't encounter as much resistance (or at least different resistance) if you just said something to the effect of "devoply, you're in the X% of users that google tolerates providing a sub-standard experience to, and I don't give a fuck either."

You don't have to use Google services. Or Google client. Or Google DNS. Or Google domains. Even with adblocker, and on third-party websites I still get one click captcha. I get that you see a single company taking over a lot of infrastructure, but the captcha is probably not the great example.

Not sure what you're talking about. It's all just standard web technologies. Cookes, localStorage, etc.

Last time I tried to login to namecheap with firefox I got like 5 captcha checks (select all tiles with signs) and ended up with the annoying one that says "click on the tiles until you don't see any more cars", the annoying part with that was that it took AGES until the new images appeared. When I tried the audio thing it said "we are sorry but you computer is sending up automated network requests" or something like that.

When I tried again with chromium it got instantly verified.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com