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> I run a website with no trackers, no ads, nothing at all to do with Google or any other company in any way.

Then your site will not be included in FLoC: "A page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources." -- https://web.dev/floc/

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

Thanks. I hate FLoC, but accurate facts need to get to the top.

Thanks for the clarification. It appears I can't edit my original comment to add in a mea culpa!

No idea how I managed to get it so far off the mark there... :(

For anyone reading this, downvote my original comment up the top please to get it off the top as it's inaccurate: I know it's cool to bash Google on here but my original assumption was waaaaaay off.

That "During the current FLoC origin trial" bit scares me though. Why should I assume the scope of implicit inclusion in FLoC won't be expanded in the future?

I don't exactly trust this opt-out header. The spec makes it sound like it's not so much a request to the user agent not to use cohorts in general. Rather it's a security-in-depth measure to prevent third-party scripts or injected spyware from exploiting certain functions. So those functions are disabled for resources loaded from that domain. Chrome, meanwhile, can still do whatever it likes.

> That "During the current FLoC origin trial" bit scares me though. Why should I assume the scope of implicit inclusion in FLoC won't be expanded in the future?

It's the other way around: it's saying that normally "a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page" but to support this specific origin trial it will also include pages "if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources". This is needed to avoid the chicken and egg problem that you would otherwise have in a proof-of-concept experiment.

Hi Jeff,

While I don't like ads, and so by association I blindly don't like FLoC or cookies, I've been following your comments via RSS out of interest and I'd like to say thanks for always popping up in these threads to untangle some of the misconceptions (from your point of view).

That doesn't necessarily mean that I, or others, trust what Google, as a business, might do tomorrow compared to what it says today but given how little the wider world tends to hear from Google (that isn't editorialised in some sense), it's nice to see Google employees engaging on Hacker News :)

Thanks!

Accurate, but not set in stone. Google owns Chrome, so they could decide to make it opt-out in the future.

> if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources

how does it make this decision?

It uses a filter based on EasyList: https://github.com/chromium/chromium-ads-detection/blob/mast...

> my site, by proxy, is participating

I'm 100% against this whole FLoC thing but I really cannot understand this conclusion.

If I drive through a McDonald's drivethrough, and Android/iOS/Fitbit/Tesla/whomever records my journey via GPS, they know I ate a McDonald's but McDonald's the company has not directly "participated" in any tracking of any kind.

I don't think your website is participating really. There are a lot of posts describing this opt-out but none really say what you are opting out of.

It seems that the content of your website may be used to identify the users interest.

It isn't illegal because the browser is allowed to do whatever you want with your website. This is really no different than an extension that can access your website content to recommend other pages you may be interested in.

In the same way it isn't clear to me why I would want to opt-out. I guess it is 1. Sending Google a signal and 2. Protecting users from themselves?

But if I want to protect users from themselves I'm probably better off showing a banner recommending Firefox. (And this also helps the open web at the same time)

> If my guess is correct, how the actual fuck is this not illegal?

Because Google has effectively embedded and interwoven itself so tightly into the fabric of the web, that simply having no association with them is impossible. Vint Cerf is their evangelist. The creator of The Internet is an evangelist for Google! Read more:

https://research.google/people/author32412/

> Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He contributes to global policy development and continued spread of the Internet.

>Google are just using your Chrome browsing data

"Just"? Google should have absolutely no access to your non-Google browsing history whatsoever.

That alone is pitchfork-worthy.

It's the browser that's the issue, not your site.

Seems similar to the Google Street View issue. They took pictures of public places, and you had to manually request to have your face or identifying info removed, if they were revealed.

The website is public in the same way as it can be accessed by any browser and isn't blocking search robots.

This sounds like the perfect reason to not use Chrome.

As a website owner, my question is how extensively can Google punish me for asking them not to use my site as part of their analysis?

Why would you control what people use to visit your website? By leaving your website on the open web, you contribute to a bunch of other things, bots parse it left and right, rank it among other websites, archive.org makes snapshots, and not one of them had you opt in. How is this current case different?