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Comment by Timshel | Hacker News Reader

Kind of as long as they can track you, it's good if others cannot.

That was my thought, why not allow this feature without the need to login in a Google account?

Exactly. It doesn't seem it has anything to do with user privacy. Google just tries to keep tracking data for themselves only.

Doesn't that fall in the category of monopolization, which can trigger Antitrust laws?

It’s a tricky trade off.

Most privacy changes have the effect of advantaging the position of big tech. To some extent this is unavoidable because users will actively consent to share data with Google etc but not AdTech startups.

For example, Apple’s ATT rules for app tracking made their own App Store search ads more competitive to Facebook. And the removal of third party cookies benefits Google’s banner ad business over rivals.

Does Apple's IP hiding feature work without an iCloud login? I'm not at my computer, so I can't check.

It requires an active iCloud+ subscription so I don’t see how that’d be possible.

However they say that Apple can’t see the final destination of your traffic.

https://support.apple.com/en-euro/102602

Because Google is an American corporation and as such will never do something that solely benefits its users and not also itself.

Unlike corporations in other countries which gladly give away money and labour to their clients. Or something.

Because your use of a proxy is governed by certain terms, and you agreed to them by signing up to a Google account and signing into Chrome?

Perhaps the parent commenter knew that and was curious what technical reason, if any, Google is using to justify the decision.

Yes I'm curious about the technical reasons, my mistake in thinking my comment would make that implicit clear to the dear reader.

It's answered in the document:

>IP Protection will use client authentication to limit the ability of bad actors to leverage the proxies to amplify attacks on services on the Masked Domain List. Therefore, IP Protection will only be available to users that have been authenticated using the Google account they're signed in with in the Chrome browser prior to opening a new Incognito window.

because it's not realistic to provide a proxy service without ensuring that the users are legitimate due to abuse, it would be like running a tor exit node.

there's no ethical way for Google to provide this service, they just shouldn't.

Yes. This is merely another stab at competition while increasing their own user activity profile corpus.

It's so transparent and ludicrous, at first I thought it was an Onion or April Fools post.

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