
Google is Exploring an Alternative to Cookies for Ad Tracking - stfu
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/google-is-exploring-an-alternative-to-cookies-for-ad-tracking/?_r=0
======
fear91
I've used chrome because it was faster than Firefox ( and didn't crash so
often ).

I've switched to Firefox a few weeks ago and couldn't be happier. It seems
that all the stability issues were resolved.

I urge everyone to do the same.

~~~
pimeys
I've been using Firefox as my main browser for a couple of years now. It's
really getting better in every build. And Vimperator is not available for
Chrome. Nowadays my biggest reason to stay with Firefox is that I trust
Mozilla more than I trust Google.

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
I switched from FF when it was sluggish. Funny, the reason I don't switch back
is the opposite of yours: I don't want to miss Vimium... how does Vimperator
compare to Vimium?

~~~
ANTSANTS
I was in the same boat. I tried to switch back to Firefox a while back. Some
people prefer Vimperator and Pentadactyl, but after using Vimium for a while,
I found them to be a little too complicated and, well, _different_ from what I
was used to. It's possible I could have adjusted, but I didn't bother at the
time and quickly returned to Chromium.

Later I discovered a Firefox addon called VimFX that basically aims to be
"Chromium for Firefox": A very simple set of Vim-like shortcuts, configured in
almost exactly the way Chromium is. Once I started using it, I felt right at
home in Firefox, and I haven't looked back since. It's got a few warts (delay
when using gg, Ctrl-F rebound to PageDown by default), but all things
considered I'm pretty happy with it.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vimfx/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vimfx/)

[https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx](https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx)

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
thank you! :)

------
eps
I bet that this is a preventive PR diversion for something else.

Google is anything but stupid. Given current post-Snowden climate they surely
realize that something as obnoxiuos as built-in browser tracking is going to
raise a storm of discontent. But they have decided to realize this information
anyway. So they let this stew a little and suggest some alternative, probably
as nasty, but it will look mild in comparison, and everyone will be happy.
It's your good old anchoring - start with something completely obnoxious so
that the thing that you actually want will look benign against it.

~~~
lnanek2
Releasing this information is bad for their consumer uptake, but good for
their advertising business, and their advertising business is where they make
all their money.

When it comes down to it for consumers, they'll just make it optional to help
with complaints, and the masses will never dig down into their preferences to
turn it off, so it won't matter that it is optional as far as advertisers are
concerned.

------
spanishcow
The problem are not the cookies. The problem is the tracking and the privacy
invasion. I don't want some body following me at every step to know every
thing I do using cookies or any alternative method.

~~~
Kiro
Then that's the problem for you, not the problem in general.

~~~
mrweasel
You're most likely right, in that most people don't care about being tracked,
but Google still isn't solving the basic problem, they are just working around
the cookie restrictions.

The focus should be on making a profit, while respecting peoples privacy.

~~~
alecsmart1
I honestly don't mind being tracked. I don't know if it's just me but I prefer
targeted advertising than just generic one. It's always more relevant and I do
end up purchasing. Without tracking, there would be no targeted advertising.

~~~
mrweasel
You're assuming that advertising is the correct or only business strategy. I
wouldn't mind getting tracked, if I felt that I could trust the companies
collecting data about me, or perhaps just get access to it.

Honestly I don't see the value of tracking though. I tried running my browser
without Ghostery recently. The "tracked" ads are generally pretty poorly
targeted. I got a lot of ads for TransIP after browsing their price plans, but
that's sort of the wrong time, at this point I'm already aware of them.

Amazons recommendations are pretty good for books, but not much more than that
and that's despite them having huge amounts of data.

So why the need to track me, if you can't do anything useful with it?

~~~
woud420
And it's getting better and better. Recommendation for books is much easier in
that context since you have a hard sale and can compare to other hard sales..
and not assumptions based on visits.

------
taway2012
Remember the huge controversy that erupted when Intel wanted to put a program-
readable unique serial number into its CPUs (in 1999)?

[https://www.schneier.com/essay-187.html](https://www.schneier.com/essay-187.html)

[http://slashdot.org/story/00/04/27/1021245/Intel-To-Drop-
CPU...](http://slashdot.org/story/00/04/27/1021245/Intel-To-Drop-CPU-ID-
Number)

------
bowlofpetunias
Wow. "Don't be evil" is really dead and buried isn't it?

~~~
ma2rten
How exactly is this more evil than a tracking cookie? To me it sounds pretty
much the same.

~~~
foobarqux
They can't be deleted or blocked. They are not confined to one device.

~~~
sspiff
After reading the article, I fail to see how these are not confined to one
device. basically, the article suggests that they'll add a random unique ID to
the browsers' identification (I assume they're talking about the user agent).
How would this spread across devices?

~~~
foobarqux
My mistake. But they are trivial to correlate and I would expect them to be
correlated.

~~~
sspiff
Correlating seems very easy & likely indeed, I didn't think about that.

------
sayhello
This is not news. The article is about 2 weeks old and seems vague about
details.

There are more articles on the topic on the net. This identifier has been
dubbed "AdID". Read more here: [http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/telecom/internet/google...](http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/telecom/internet/googles-adid-aims-to-replace-cookies-for-tracking-web-
users)

------
001sky
_We believe that technological enhancements can improve users’ security while
ensuring the Web remains economically viable_

Alternatively, it maybe time for some creative destruction.

------
mistercow
Microsoft or Apple could get away with this, since their browsers are bundled.
Google could get away with it on Android.

But on the desktop? Nope. In a world where most users don't know the
difference between a search engine and a web browser, Chrome's success relies
on the tech savvy (through first person usage and recommendations to friends).

Add this "feature", and roughly 100% of that marketing force gets redirected
back to Firefox.

------
fauigerzigerk
I hope they go with this nonsense. It's almost as easy to kill as cookies and
it's going to be a PR disaster, maybe even a legal nightmare for them.
Browser/system fingerprinting would scare me a lot more because it doesn't
require anything on the client side.

------
achille
I thought this was well known, the "cookie" is known as RLZ

> [http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/in-open-for-
> rlz.html](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/in-open-for-rlz.html)

 _RLZ gives us the ability to accurately measure the success of marketing
promotions and distribution partnerships in order to meet our contractual and
financial obligations. It assigns non-unique, non-personally identifiable
promotion tracking labels to client products_

~~~
skymt
The RLZ string isn't unique per user, and AFAIK it isn't used at all by
Google's ad systems. It's used to measure the effectiveness of Google's
marketing of their own software.

[http://code.google.com/p/rlz/wiki/HowToReadAnRlzString](http://code.google.com/p/rlz/wiki/HowToReadAnRlzString)

------
4dl0v3-p34c3
BTW, if anyone is looking for alternative web browsers that you can truly
control, and have some of the defaults set for privacy:

Web Browsers GUI: Dooble, GNU IceCat, Luakit, NetSurf, Web/Epiphany (Galeon),
Dillo, Amaya (for authoring), Swiftweasel, Conkeror, Arora, Midori, rekonq,
Kazehakase

My GUI picks: xombrero, Uzbl, surf (with tabbed, it is amazing), dwb, jumanji

TUI Web browsers: w3m, elinks, links2, Links, Linkx, lynx, cURL, ed browser,
wget

Relevant Threads:
[http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=13661&p=1](http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=13661&p=1)
[https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116165](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116165)

In the future, I wish to have a browser that maps all the cached files, per
page you are viewing, with each of the domains, IP address, and the WebSockets
connections it makes. Whether it be tree mapped, or tabular, it would be
awesome to have a browser monitors all network event and files live, while you
are viewing a page, maybe in a tile/window somewhere. For now, we have Jails
we can open on the fly, with a new browser instance on each, connected to the
custom firewall rules, that opens a page per domain. When done with the page,
we get rid of the jail instance.

------
jonknee
This has been talked about for a while and sounds like what Apple does on iOS.

------
patmcguire
You can do a hack with ETags - that was the first thing I came up with after
30 seconds of brainstorming how you would do it, and it looks like sites are
already using them for that purpose.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags)

------
ksk
Well, what could they do? Google is not making enough money :P

I think in 10 years we'll all be buying ad-supported Google PCs for free and
they'll have a little window that you cant get rid of - that will show you
ads. And probably have eye tracking that will blank the monitor every hour if
you dont look at the ad.

Chrome has already turned into a keylogger than can also browse the internet.
I remember watching a really old screensavers episode with Patrick Norton
discussing how cookies were evil and how websites voilated user privacy by
saving their IP addresses !. Hell.. Netscape was sued 13 years ago just
because they captured what links you clicked.

[http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/07/37435](http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/07/37435)

~~~
MildlySerious
A computer in 10 years, by Google, that can black out your screen. Google
Glass?

~~~
ksk
What about a google helmet? You cant look away or mute when they show you ads
:P

------
teh
Does anyone know how the IDs can be anonymous? What's stopping anyone from
associating the ID (presumably sent as a header?) with an account on my site?

Is it maybe like an OTP based where google and chrome generate a new ID for
every request, opaque to the intermediary but google can correlate them later?

~~~
lnanek2
In Apple's system, at least, each app gets a different ID for the same user.
So supposedly you can't track a user across sites/apps since the user will
have a different ID for each.

~~~
ceejayoz
I believe it's each set of apps from the same developer. Apple's developer
docs say the device identifier changes if a user deletes _all_ of your apps,
not just the current one.

------
devx
This is what you get when you let Google track you with ads - less privacy for
all:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57606178-83/nsa-tracks-
goog...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57606178-83/nsa-tracks-google-ads-
to-find-tor-users/)

------
theklub
I always thought they should be called crumbs instead of cookies.

------
elorant
In a sense this could be good news. If advertisers were using a different
technology rather than cookies that could make our lives as developers a lot
easier since we wouldn’t have to bother building alternatives for the lack of
cookies in our web apps. Ads are what gave cookies a bad name. If in the years
to come cookies can be disengaged from ads that would make users more
reluctant to disable them.

------
officemonkey
Embrace, extend, extinguish.

------
bkardell
the info in this piece about Mozilla following safari suit on third party
cookies is out dated i think. [https://brendaneich.com/2013/06/the-cookie-
clearinghouse/](https://brendaneich.com/2013/06/the-cookie-clearinghouse/)

------
logn
Good thing chromium is open source. I'll make my 'anonymous' GUID simply:
googlebot

------
anxiousest
I don't get the alarmist tone of that piece: it's very preliminary, they are
consulting with interested parties, building an opt out mechanism.

Oh and Apple already deployed an identical ad id a while ago.

~~~
Fargren
I think "it's opt-out" is a very poor excuse. When something of this type is
going to be implemented, opt-in should be the default. If you can't convince
the people who will be affected by this that they are going to want it, then
you are probably in the wrong.

