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Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

So if I understand this correctly, then killing off 3rd party cookies is anti-competitive, leaving them in is anti-privacy, and putting out a privacy-enhancing alternative is also anti-competitive. Is there anything that can be done that would satisfy all regulations?

Also, this reminds me of a story I heard years ago, that a California oil change location needed to store oil above ground due to EPA regulations, but needed it stored underground to satisfy the fire department regulations. So they were constantly getting fined from one or the other, and had to just include those fines as a cost of doing business.

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I think you're slightly off on that first one. Killing 3rs party cookies isn't anti-competitive, in fact I'd argue any decent browser should do it to protect their users' privacy.

What is possibly anti-competitive is their proposed alternative. And frankly I'm not sold on the supposed privacy of such an alternative either (which, in order to be functionally different from 3rd party cookies, will have to store personal identifying information in a location that users cannot access, edit and/or control).

Note also that (to my knowledge) browsers are not currently obligated to protect their users' privacy (though perhaps they should be, it makes more sense than punishing websites for sending cookies). This leaves google at least 2 completely legitimate options:

1. Keep 3rd party cookies.

2. Kill 3rd party cookies.

Sure the first will cost them their privacy conscious users and the second might hurt their ad business, but rejecting that choice on the sole grounds that it would hurt the bottom line of a different venture is textbook anti-trust. They'll probably list other reasons for not taking that second option, though I've not found them terribly convincing so far.

> Killing 3rs party cookies isn't anti-competitive

The problem is that when it comes to determining what's anti-competitive, yours is not the opinion that matters. According to the article, multiple US states, a US House submicommitee believe it is anticompetitive and now a UK regulator is also investigating whether it is. This is not a hypothetical like you think. It is what the people in power actually are on record about.

Your option 2 does not exist. Just full stop.

So we're left with the idea that every other browser in the world can improve privacy, but not the one that most people use. Do you seriously not see how fucked up that is? Why do you want to build up this garbage narrative about how it's not the fault of the authorities?

I'm having some trouble following your argument. You seem to be accusing me of the thing I'm against on the basis that my opinion isn't the one that matters.

Ok, then we're in the same boat because I also don't understand what you mean.

You're asserting that "killing 3rd party cookies is not anti-competitive". You presented no proof about this, it is just an opinion. Your entire point about what the valid options are is based on this assertion.

On the other hand, several US states and a US house committee apparently think otherwise, and the UK regulators think it at least merits investigation.

And yes, when evaluating whether there is regulatory risk from "killing 3rd party cookies", obviously the group from the previous paragraph is going to matter more than yours.

I am not "accusing you of the thing you're against". I'm not even sure what "you're against" or what the accusation is supposed to be.

Seems our communication has broken down somehow. So at this point I'm not sure how to continue this discussion, it might be better to just cut our losses. Your earlier questions are loaded in such a way that I'm afraid I don't see how I could begin to answer them in a way that still makes sense.

Perhaps it's time to recognize that the company simply need not exist in it's present form. If Google was required to spin off Chrome as an independent company, there would be no antitrust issue, and privacy protections Chrome made would not also include anti-privacy features designed to feed Google's ad business.

The reality is, Google needs to be broken up. Every fine they get makes that clear.

How would chrome survive as a business?

How did Mozilla survive as a business? Why is Brave around?

Brave is terrible example. Brave is vc funded or ICO funded. Mozilla depends on donations and selling the search engine slot.

Mozilla is financed directly by Google. Brave is injecting their own ads into websites.

Not really the best examples.

Honestly several of these guys just want to promote 'break google up' every chance they get just because it makes them feel good - without understanding how bad the consequences would be.

What would the bad consequences be?

One example: The road from security to revenue is a bit windy. So suppose chrome gets a revenue crunch after getting spun off, and lays off a bunch of the security group. Well, it turns out that security group is actually handling security for ALL of the browsers, because security is expensive, and none of the browsers are really making money, and chrome is open source. So now you've got reduced security in all of the browsers. Whoops?

Sure, could happen. Or maybe more of the relevant players share the load, the way they do with the kernel.

I've been using Brave on mobile and my laptop (currently running Pop!_os) exclusively for about six months now, coming from Firefox. Your criticism isn't accurate, Brave doesn't insert ads into pages, it gives you the option of receiving ads in your notification stream. If you choose to allow the ads you are compensated with a small amount of a crypto currency, which you can opt to have automatically distributed to the participating sites you visit. Wikipedia, for example, is a participating site. These micropayments offer the only viable monetization alternative I'm aware of to charging for access, selling user data, or including advertising on your page. I've moved to using Brave exclusively because I want to live in a world where the web is free to access but my privacy is respected and my browser isn't crowded with ads.

Brave does not inject their own ads into websites.

>How did Mozilla survive as a business?

On one end by almost literally being an extension of Google. On the other end by constantly laying off engineers. A big problem people are just handwaving away is that browsers are incredibly complex nowadays and how do you fund development of a browser engine? If you think the "Linux" model would work, well browsers already have that - it's called Mozilla and there is never any good news about them.

Brave is also funded by Google - Brave doesn't develop a browser, they develop a skin around a browser engine that Google pays millions to develop and has decided to open source.

Browsers are way more complex than OSs these days. Mozillas Servo project had over 40,000 commits and still wasn't ready for production and it was only a small part of the browser. I don't think there is anything else that could have 40k commits and still be a tech demo.

back in 1999 looking at nspr (Netscape Portable Runtime - the foundation of Mozilla) i remember thinking - it just can be packaged alone as an OS, similar to Java OS (which i had been working with before that our Mozilla project).

There is also another aspect to it - one can imagine that the time of an OS which would run web apps as first class citizens (in the correctly engineered sandboxes/etc.) just hasn't come yet. In the meantime the browsers are just ugly stop-gap 0.x version of such an OS (there is a reason they are "browsers" as their roots (incl. deep architectural roots) are in browsing of static content, and everything else is bolt-ons - the integration of JavaScript engine for example back then could be best described exactly as a "bolt-on").

How would Linux kernel development survive as a business?

Linux kernel development survives because its biggest users develop it.

It's certainly possible for a browser to survive that way, but Konqueror doesn't seem to be terribly successful.

It's also worth thinking that many of those big users are also the very adtech companies people are hating on here, but for some reason it's fine to fund kernels and not web browsers with ads.

It would be interesting to know if Google engineers regularly commit kernel patches breaking Microsoft's Azure integration while pushing people to Google cloud.

It survives because GPL forces it to be performed in the open, in a cooperative manner. This is not the case with browsers.

Both Linux kernel and web browsers are arguably too huge now to be even maintained entirely by a single organization, let alone to be developed from scratch by one.

Linux being under GPL kinda forces cooperation between businesses for their business needs, if they are going to tweak Linux. With browsers are you under impression that you can just fork Chromium maintained by someone else and then just add your business value for you alone to reap.

By auctioning the default search engine slot.

Wouldn't that make them entirely beholden to search engines that rely on ad revenue to pay Chrome? It doesn't seem to change the underlying incentives very much.

Doesn’t that already happen? Chrome currently survives thanks to advertising either way. Splitting Google would just make it a little more indirect.

I'd say there's a big difference between having one primary customer and literally being owned by that customer. I would bet that a significant part Chrome's development is built around feeding data to other parts of Google, which would be more difficult and less appealing as a separate company.

Plus, there's no rule that says a browser has to get most of its revenue from selling Google Search placement. That just happens to be the case for the single independent browser that exists right now, one which isn't exactly renowned for great business leadership. I think if the Chrome team had a reason to explore self sustaining revenue models there's a good chance they would come up with some solid innovations.

It currently is completelly owned by Google (Alphabet) so your comment would be more of a "there is a possibility that they would end up still relying on Google's ad revenue".

As the window 70% of people access the Internet through globally, Chrome has nearly limitless options for monetization. Arguably, being part of Google hurts it, because it has to fit into Google's ideal business strategy.

So they’d be Firefox & wholly dependent on Google for search revenue money (I.e. ad money) anyway? Firefox already gets a lot of flack with their 3.65% & I don’t think that complaints about Chrome will stop if they’re still owning ~70% of browser market share with Google paying their bills.

The only solution that would actually work is better regulation of the advertising space, but all advertisers (Google included) actively fight this. For example, ban governments from purchasing personal information without a warrant. Ban the sale of any/all personal information between companies - any personal information transferred should be gratis with at most nominal costs for the cost of the transfer itself. But then you might have to actually start paying for some services rather than everything being totally ad supported. Not to mention that governments, despite all their outcries about “privacy” and “evil corporations” love the status quo because of how easy it makes to invade your privacy without a warrant.

> So they’d be Firefox & wholly dependent on Google for search revenue money (I.e. ad money) anyway?

Not necessarily, its engine is now what powers Edge. Microsoft might support it.

You mention nearly limitless options but fail to mention one. Can you give some examples?

default search seems to be pretty lucrative.

at the very least, Google could pay to be the default search provider... it works for Mozilla, so far, and if Google had to , even at arms length, separate Chrome from the rest of Google, it would strengthen, not weaken, the case for Google's investment in paying Apple and Mozilla for top placement, helping to reinforce competition on both the mobile and browser fronts.

It's data collection is in Chrome's DNA. They could just continue to collect data on browser usage, and then "sell" that data to Google. No need for sites to install Analytics into their website when they can get 100% of all site analytics viewed from within their browser.

A key difference here is that Chrome could sell aggregated analytics data for performance testing and such, but not allow the ad company to get user-targeting quality data. With them in the same company, this is a nearly impossible barrier to achieve.

I'll bite: why is this nearly impossible to achieve?

It may be nearly impossible to prove to you, but what makes it impossible, or even particularly difficult, to achieve if the company is interested in doing it?

> Chrome has nearly limitless options for monetization.

They do?

Apple gives away a pretty decent browser with their OS.

Microsoft gives away a version of Chrome with their OS (and for MacOS).

Most Linux versions ship with variants of Chromium.

The Chrome source which is a fork of WebKit which is in turn a fork of KHTML... is Open Source.

Chrome can't really be sold.

What exactly could "Chrome" the company do to make money?

>> Chrome can't really be sold.

Chrome can not be sold for many reasons, being open source is not one of them, nothing prevents the selling of open source software, one just has to include the source or make the source available

Finding someone willing to buy chrome would be a harder problem

Indeed, especially when you have an official/trustworthy solution. For example, you could gate off value-adds for paying customers, whilst still making them open source. Sure, users can remove the "paid user" aspect and either compile it themselves or entrust that process to a third party. But the majority of users would not do so because of the effort or trust involved. (This is similar to movie piracy. Sure, it's trivial to pirate movies and music, but the majority of people pay for them.)

> Chrome can't really be sold.

Right. Now try to use that top right "user" icon on your chrome window to log in as a user that is not from a google account.

No idea what icon you are speaking of. I don't use Chrome much and don't log into it when I do. I certainly don't think anyone is going to pay for the privilege.

OMG the lack of understanding of basic ad tracking in this forum baffles me.

Nobody is going to pay. But if google serve an ad for a logged out (or firefox) user, they get paid 0.05c if they serve the same ad to someone logged in (via that button or otherwise) they get paid 1.7usd.

the button is just to make you be always logged in.

You are paying all the time and don't even realize.

Chrome already has an enterprise version with support and management tools (mostly for Chrome OS), that plus donations from Microsoft/Google could make it profitable for the team required. (Although it'd probably end up being a foundation like Mozilla)

The question is: can that income fund the Google-style salaries and benefits that are currently being payed for people working on it?

Otherwise lots of existing employees may not want to be part of this split company. If that is a large loss of talent (think veterans with lots of experience) that could hurt the quality (security, stability) and velocity of the project resulting in much less interest from those companies to pay the Chrome company for their services. What I'd suspect at that point is that Google might just fork it and develop it internally for internal use only (it's going to be hard to trust a third party browser to access internal confidential/critical resources when said third party has trouble maintaining high quality engineering talent). We're talking about state actors here that could have much easier time attacking a smaller Chrome company to introduce data exfiltration code.

Microsoft will probably have much of the high-quality engineering talent upstreaming work from Edge. Maybe Google will fork it, but nation-state actors haven't compromised Firefox (to our knowledge) even at its peak, why would they have more luck with Chrome?

limitless options? you mean ads. I don't think they can start charging users money. And if Chrome is forced to start directly monetizing, I can't see that ending well for the product. Any way they could possibly extract money from me would require it to do something I don't want, such as interjecting itself between me and an online merchant, or between me and content, or via integrations with partners I don't want (maybe even Google, which would defeat the purpose of the proposed split), or by selling a "premium" feature set. If Chrome had to make money it would suck as a product and everyone would move to safari/edge/etc bc they don't have the same pressure.

Could go the same path as Brave: be a conduit for funding between consumer (me) and creator... then take a small percentage for facilitating the transactions.

Does it need to survive?

That it seems unlikely a browser that is not Chrome, vertically integrated by Google, could survive financially, is a good sign it need to happen imo

I guess ideally either Chrome or Firefox would be organized as a charitable trust with an endowment, its stated mission to service users of the web, and the EFF given a permanent seat on its board of directors.

How to get from here to there, I don't know.

Firefox is owned by Mozilla Corp, owned by Mozilla Foundation, which is a non-profit -- and Mozilla has a sizable budget.

> How to get from here to there, I don't know.

You literally are there!

Sure, it's easy to criticize Mozilla for having "wrong priorities", being "pragmatic about EME", Firefox OS, losing market share, etc.

But simply saying a new board would fix things seems a bit naive.

> How would chrome survive as a business?

by doing *exactly* what Google sued microsoft for trying to do with IE in the 90s. Isn't it funny?

Yup, when there is nothing a company can do in a situation to avoid anti-trust regulation, that is a pretty good indication anti-trust regulation should have already happened.

Well said! I'm going to use this and other people should as well.

Playing devil's advocate, how is Google & Chrome different from, say, Apple & App Store? Thinking about iOS like a browser, arguably what Privacy Sandbox does is not that different from iOS 14's AppTrackingTransparency Framework. Both require the operator of the internals not to abuse their position for there to be fair play.

The most generous thing I could say is that it feels different. However, Apple has a stronger hold on iOS than Google has on the web. On the web, at least you could switch to another browser to view the same content. Switching off iPhone requires a whole new ecosystem and hardware.

I hope people who argue for a certain treatment of Google in this case are at least consistent in the Apple case.

1. I think Apple wields a questionable monopoly with regards to the App Store. I think that they should be required to allow third party stores, at minimum, on the iPhone. I am very much hoping Epic wins their case here, and that we have a more open field on iOS in the future.

2. Apple's new privacy changes require that apps solicit user permission before doing any tracking. However, once the user has granted that, app developers are allowed to either use Apple's solution or their own.

> Thinking about iOS like a browser, arguably what Privacy Sandbox does is not that different from iOS 14's AppTrackingTransparency Framework

Apple's AppTrackingTransparency Framework harms a market that Apple is not a part of. That specific action doesn't have any monopoly connotations in my mind because it solely benefited the product that was changed. There are no knock on effects where now Apple Maps is worth more.

Also, in this case, the consumers that are harmed by Google's alleged monopoly are people who are buying ads, not people using Chrome. I don't do anything with ads, but the impression I got from other people is that it's much easier for a consumer to switch phones than it is for an advertiser to just not advertise with Google.

I do think Apple has monopoly issues, I just don't think ATT is part of it. That was a legitimate response to consumer demand for privacy.

Firefox is completely an independent entity from Google and the reality is that they needed to accept the manifest v3 because their survival entirely depends on Google's money. Why do you think the situation would be different from this if Chrome get broken up from Google?

No. The reason Google is killing third party cookies in Chrome (I firmly believe) is because Google—and only Google—doesn't need cookies to track you. Google owns the browser.

If Google was killing third party cookies in Chrome while also removing other tracking features, regulators wouldn't have a leg to stand on. But back in the real world, they are absolutely correct to see through Google's BS.

The claim that killing 3rd party cookies is anti-competitive is some Marketing Company Bullshit. A group in France is also suing Apple on antitrust grounds because they're going to ask users if they want to be tracked.

What's actually anti-competitive is the idea that Google will kill them off and replace it with a solution which they control, forcing advertisers to deal with them and their ad products directly in order to do anything.

Whether that's actually what's happening is another question entirely.

> Is there anything that can be done that would satisfy all regulations?

We could go back to having advertisements be relevant to the content audience instead of the specific viewer and end stalkerware for good.

Crazy talk, I know...

Killing off 3rd party cookies is anti-competitive because Google has the means to continue tracking people without them.

If Google didn't own something like 60% of the browser market, it would just be a privacy enhancement.

> needed to store oil above ground due to EPA regulations, but needed it stored underground to satisfy the fire department regulations.

Did they try building tanks both above and below ground, connecting them with two pipes so there's a circle, and constantly pumping it along that circle so it is not stored anywhere but merely in transit through both areas?

You're right, everything they do is illegal because it is an illegal monopoly that needs to be broken up.

I'm reminded of a snarky libertarian quip:

> If a big company charges more than the competition, they say they're illegally abusing their monopoly.

> If a big company charges the same as the competition, they say it's illegal collusion.

> If a big company charges less than the competition, they say it's illegal price-dumping.

This seems like it overlooks the obvious possibility of things that don't fall into any of those three categories...

Sure, it's just a silly quip, I'm not saying it's watertight.

So being a small company?

Yes, eliminate cookies entirely. Let companies revert to relying on consumer feedback and word of mouth praise rather than cyberstalking.

In a word, no. Google and other corporate monoliths like it depend on data, as much as they can get, as personal as it can be, and pervasive as the air we breathe. Consumers want privacy, control over their data, and the power to say no. The only sensible middle ground is for Google and others to be up front about the data, what they do with it, where it goes, etc. and the consumer having the ability to say no. Unfortunately Google, etc. cannot back away from their position because they risk losing a market edge. Perhaps PAYING users for their data, that would be an interesting middle ground, but the shareholders of the monoliths would likely reject such a proposal.

I think you're projecting the HN crowd a bit here.

The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do.

I'm not making a value judgement on that, it's simply how it is.

People want to use services like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or Google search/Gmail/Google Maps that have the functionality they enjoy.

If those companies can show them targeted ads vs random useless ads, the majority of people seem to be fine with that tradeoff.

I want it to be the year of the Linus desktop for a long while but I've made peace with the fact that's not the majority view. Most people are happy with a proprietary desktop that just works.

I think it is clear that the public cares about privacy but only when they are fully educated about what a given platform is doing. The public is not reading the privacy policies, or looking at the app permissions or do anything really to educate themselves on all the ways Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc are abusing their data

But if a high profile news story comes out about some privacy issue they are outraged about it.

This shows a education / knowledge gap, I dont know how to close it, or if it can even be closed but to say "no one cares about privacy" I believe is false

The public cares about privacy, yes. But only as long as its presence doesn‘t inconvenience them in any way.

People hate the GDPR pop ups. Most are badly designed (probably on purpose) and make it easy to accept all and difficult to customize/reject all. Most people are just going to click accept because it makes the box disappear faster.

Let‘s say we have the new Apple opt-in rules for Facebook. There‘s a pop-up some day asking users: „do you want facebook to be able to track you?“ many people will say no. But only because it‘s really easy/frictionless and the app presumably functions as normal.

So primarily users want to do want users want to do. They don‘t care about tracking/ads as long as avoiding them isn‘t completely simple.

> The majority of normal people probably don't care as much about "privacy" as some of the vocal folks here do.

I think you're correct, but then that makes it a no-brainer for Google. Let us opt-out, the other 99% will continue to be part of the data harvest (and they like it!). Google can say they give user's a choice.

The majority of users do care about privacy but its a concept they struggle to understand and they do not know when they are being tracked, what is being tracked or how to stop it.

The EU was on the right track about requiring tracking to be opt in while also having an option to say no without being blocked from the service.

It's a good analogy - like oil, companies industry-wide should reduce their dependence on data, and companies that still deal in it should be prepared to deal with heightened legal scrutiny and additional restrictions.

It's all allowed because of Clinton-era bill that legalized data collection in the first place.

Can you imagine? Before that, databases of metadata couldn't be copyrighted without getting consent for the owners of said information.

Perhaps we should our digital ethics going back to basics - corporations shouldn't have a "right" to own data that doesn't belong to them.

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