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Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

> Free products are generally supported by advertising. We are being told the W3C has “slapped down” googles attempts around FPS.

You were talking about "If users can’t access gmail / YouTube etc, they will be ignoring the w3c". Now it's suddenly "free sites" and "advertising".

And don't worry, advertising isn't going anywhere.

> I am making the point that if google comes up with a workaround to this “slap down” - users will follow

They will not come up with a "workaround", they will just implement it ignoring any objections.

However, that's not the point. What was it about users not being able to access youtube etc.?

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Gmail and youtube are offered free to users.

They are supported by advertising.

This is not 'suddenly 'free sites' and 'advertising'" - this is how both of these sites have been from the beginning, adding paid options later.

If the w3c somehow forced users to jump through hoops to allow google to advertise to them so they could access their youtube and their Gmail, they would jump through those hoops rather than lose access.

That said, I'm not sure I even believe that W3C has actually been able to "slap down" Google - but we will see. Google, not the W3C makes the BY FAR most popular browser out there, and Microsoft has recently begun migrating ITS own users to, not away from chrome.

Because we are having some definitional issues around the basics of how gmail and youtube function in terms of revenue models and user engagement I'm going to let this rest here on my side.

> If the w3c somehow forced users to jump through hoops to allow google to advertise to them

Why would users need to jump through any hoops to make advertising works? Users will do literally nothing.

You are under false impression that not implementing FPS will somehow prevent advertising from working. No, it won't.

> Because we are having some definitional issues around the basics of how gmail and youtube function in terms of revenue models and user engagement

No idea what you mean by this statement.

The only reason Google wants FPS is to have an easier way to continue tracking users across its properties. It already does that now without FPS, and, surprising no one except you, it doesn't hurt its advertising business in the least. They brought in 147 billion dollars in revenue from ads in 2020. That's 80% of Google's total revenue.

Google and Google's free services will be just fine without FPS.

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