
Verizon wants a piece of Google's ad business - evilsimon
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/5/15180622/oath-aol-yahoo-verizon-ad-tracking-privacy
======
franciscop
In my opinion this is the problem of monopoly. US ISP don't have to compete
among themselves to offer a better service as I learned recently. You/they get
one ISP per area with no option to use a different one. Then they become huge
and start to compete for _other_ things, which in this case is the content.

This turns out is bad for:

\- the user for getting subpar Internet access with a fixed conditions and no
option.

\- the user since they loose all privacy.

\- the content companies who now have to compete with someone in an power
position who has abused of that power before.

Arguably (because of FB) Google has a big monopoly on Advertising, but the
solution is not to go thermonuclear on the other side!

~~~
saganwrap
Usually there are two main options - an evil cable TV company and an equally
evil telephone company. In distant third are evil cellular data providers,
clueless WISPs, and struggling CLECs.

Oligopoly may be a natural state for last-mile high-speed Internet service. I
believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP
access to city provided FTTH. In low population density areas it seems really
difficult to avoid a monopoly or oligopoly situation.

However, I think other factors are to blame for the privacy issues: Primarily,
public ownership of corporate stock, which has caused a focus shift from the
value of the provided product or service to maximizing short-term returns.
This was the driving force between the telecom providers claiming to be
enhanced services (so they can do nasty things), when they had formerly
aggressively claimed to be common carriers (because they didn't want to be
liable for the content of customer traffic). The state PUCs have also been
asleep at the wheel while the telcos used sleight-of-hand to recategorize
tariffed services as non-tariffed.

Another factor may simply be the state of computer networking as a mass-
market, consumer product and the ensuing race to the bottom.

~~~
nikcub
> I believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP
> access to city provided FTTH

Australia has done this on a national scale. There is now a government owned
network which the existing providers were forced to sell their networks into.
The ISPs then compete for services over the top of this network.

The idea is that eventually the national network is also privatized but
constrained into being a dumb pipe by regulation.

This model has some problems - for ex. it has prevented some genuine
innovation in providing broadband, but there are many benefits to accepting
that internet infrastructure is a natural monopoly.

~~~
flukus
> This model has some problems - for ex. it has prevented some genuine
> innovation in providing broadband

Until the conservatives got into power it was going to advance broadband
considerably. Now it's just a multibillion dollar gift to their political
mates.

20 years from now when we still have slow internet I'm still going to be
telling everyone it's the Liberal parties fault.

~~~
rayiner
You see how that's a structural problem with having the government own and
build the wires? It makes investment into the network a political decision.
Some people don't want fiber installed because the ONT is too big and ugly:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fios/comments/440t1v/no_more_ugly_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fios/comments/440t1v/no_more_ugly_ont_on_side_of_house_or_indoors).
People tried to hold up FTTN rollout in SF because the thought the fiber
cabinets were ugly:
[https://www.google.com/amp/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2011/4...](https://www.google.com/amp/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2011/4/25/10470790/at-
t-you-want-to-put-that-box-where). When you nationalize the broadband, you
give these folks the power to vote on whether to use their tax dollars to
invest in broadband. That might work in a country like Japan or South Korea
where people see technological development as the path to prosperity. I
suspect it won't work in a country like Australia or the US.

------
visarga
This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful
use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for
everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into
monopolies.

But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools.
If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much
faster.

VPNs could suffer from the same problem as ISPs - how can we be sure they are
not selling customer data?

~~~
mirimir
> VPNs could suffer from the same problem as ISPs - how can we be sure they
> are not selling customer data?

Mainly because many rabid privacy freaks use VPNs, and spreading news about
VPNs that pwn users is a blood sport.

~~~
angry-hacker
What do you mean at about spreading vpns?

~~~
mirimir
Look at /r/VPN and the Wilders privacy subforums. Examples that come to mind
are HideMyAss pwning Cody Kretsinger (LulzSec recursion). An EarthVPN user was
pwned based on logs kept by its hosting provider. And so on.

~~~
angry-hacker
I see. I'm wondering if the evil free VPN provider could do redirects
google.com -> googleee.com and pwn users like that?

Also, I don't understand why people trust random VPN's with all the data, if
it's not https then it's all there to be seen or what?

~~~
mirimir
I'm sure that there's at least one that has tried that. But they wouldn't last
very long. There are some that MitM HTTPS and substitute ads. And there's one
that routes traffic from one user through other users' uplinks, and then sells
those routes as a botnet-like service.

That's why you want to avoid free VPNs. Established VPNs have valuable
reputations to protect. And about trust. When you use a VPN, you're trusting
it as much as you'd otherwise trust your ISP. The point is, you use a VPN when
you can't trust your ISP.

------
rayiner
Framing this as "who gets this pot of advertising money?" is the honest way to
frame it. Privacy is just a proxy war between companies seeking advertising
revenues.

But who gets the advertising revenue isn't the relevant policy concern. The
government shouldn't care whether Google gets that revenue or someone else.
The relevant policy concerns are what level of privacy protections do people
want, and what _practical choices_ do people have to protect their privacy.
There is so little competition in either the market for ISPs or the market for
search services that it doesn't make sense to leave privacy up to market
mechanisms in either case.

Google has evolved far beyond just showing you an ad in response to a search.
It tracks you throughout the Internet, leveraging its massive affiliate
network. It's the default search engine on both mobile platforms. It's got
more than 50% browser market share. Even if you don't go to Google.com or
gmail.com, it's nearly impossible to avoid emailing someone with a gmail
address, texting someone with an Android phone, visiting a Google affiliate
website, etc. Pointing to the possibility of using Google alternatives is as
ridiculous and self serving as pointing to satellite as broadband competition.

~~~
jacques_chester
The differences are:

1\. If Google tracks me, they have maybe 50-70% coverage of my whereabouts. My
ISP gets 100%.

2\. I mistrust Telcos more than Google, based on historical example.

Google hasn't _quite_ remained true to "Don't Be Evil" (dollars are corrosive,
billions of dollars doubly so), but at least they sorta _try_.

~~~
rayiner
Is there a rational reason to distrust telcos more than Google? Verizon did
supercookies once. Google evolved from a simple "show an ad for delivering a
search result" to tracking you all over the Internet, embedding tracking in
other websites, tracking you through the dominant browser and mobile platform,
etc. One company in this story has the history of pushing the boundaries on
pervasive invasion of privacy, and it's not Verizon.

~~~
ascagnel_
Verizon Wireless literally has a tracking program (they call it "Precision
Marketing Insights") that runs on their cell network for all devices unless
you go to a hidden page and explicitly opt-out. And it tracks separate
profiles per-phone-line.

They do more than supercookies.

------
Pica_soO
I wonder, if Verizon would step into Googles game, could we get actually good
infrastructure, when the empire retaliates?

~~~
nostrademons
They tried this with Google Fiber. Problem is that municipal governments are
in Verizon's pocket. To build any infrastructure requires the permission of
the local government, who are cozy with entrenched infrastructure providers.
So we, as consumers, continue to get fucked, while existing infrastructure
providers continue to enjoy a substandard monopoly.

~~~
rayiner
Way more municipal governments gave Google _better regulatory treatment than
incumbents_ than did the opposite. Even the Louisville lawsuits are over
municipal ordinances that gave Google what it wanted for fiber deployment.
Moreover, two large cities (LA and Baltimore) have publicly bad mouthed their
incumbents and tried to get Google to build there without success.

And of course, your theory would imply Google has less pull with municipal
governments _in Silicon Valley_ than an incumbent based on the opposite coast.
It's an utterly ridiculous theory akin to complaining that WalMart can't get a
fair shake in Benton, Arkansas.

~~~
nostrademons
Regulations can be _easier for Google than any other company building now_
while still being _more difficult than when the incumbent companies put their
wires in_. Google Fiber didn't expand to California because of CEQA; the
practical effect of CEQA is that it lets any property owner along the dig sue
to block the project entirely. Note that Google Fiber's beta test was at
Stanford, which is in Silicon Valley but happens to be private property.

~~~
rayiner
CEQA is quite a bit different than saying the "municipal governments are in
Verizon's pocket." Also, CEQA was enacted in 1970. All modern broadband
networks were built under the auspices of laws like that.

~~~
nostrademons
Yeah, perhaps I should retract the implication that the officials involved are
corrupt. There doesn't have to be outright corruption for regulations to be an
effective barrier to new entrants, and to prevent consumers from getting new
services they want. All it requires is a cost of compliance that is greater
than the delta in perceived consumer welfare, or even just a failure to pass
the benefits to consumers of regulatory changes along to the regulators who
are responsible for making them.

The broadband technology may have postdated CEQA, but Verizon already had the
right-of-ways, utility poles, and trenches dug. My parents were one of the
first customers for Verizon Fios when it launched. They ran our fiber line
over the telephone pole that had been outside our house since it was built in
1960.

~~~
rayiner
Those poles, conduits, and other rights of way are regulated by the FCC (or a
state agency under delegated powers). See:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/224).
Nothing is preventing another company from running fiber along those telephone
poles, other than the fact that there isn't any money in it.

~~~
awongh
Is that really true in practice? I've been reading lots of stories like these:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160314/09374733901/isps-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160314/09374733901/isps-
are-blocking-google-fibers-access-to-utility-poles-california.shtml) that talk
about how hard it is for any new player to get access to these last mile
infrastructure bits. Even if the rules of renting pole space are "fair" maybe
we should be encouraging competition in this space by changing them.

~~~
rayiner
The existing pole attachment process is pretty comprehensive and effective, if
a bit slow. It requires the pole owner to review the proposed attachment and
do the "make ready" work of making space on the pole for the new wires. But
there are legally enforceable deadlines for how quickly it has to do that:
[http://www.kelleydrye.com/getattachment/ea12262c-0564-45b2-9...](http://www.kelleydrye.com/getattachment/ea12262c-0564-45b2-93dd-7fca07ec9cb2/attachment.aspx).

The fight described in the Tech Dirt article isn't about Google being denied
access to existing poles. It's over a "one touch make ready" ordinance that
speeds up the process (which currently can take months) by allowing the new
ISP to move existing wires while hanging up their own. The ordinances were
passed specifically to facilitate Google's fiber deployment. One touch should
probably be part of the federal regulation. But without such an ordinance you
can still get access to the poles, it just takes longer.

(There is a political dimension to the one touch fight that's probably not
well known here. Currently, unionized telco and power company workers are
guanranteed to get some work out of the process of a new ISP coming in. Under
one touch, a new ISP could come in and hire a non-union contractor to do all
the work:
[http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2016/09/09/t-workers-f...](http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2016/09/09/t-workers-
face-uncertainty-one-touch-make-ready-vote-looms/89958322). It's not a good
reason for holding up fiber deployment, but it's why the opposition to one
touch laws has more traction than you'd expect.)

------
ksk
Google's business was to stick itself between you and link you wanted to get
to. Verizon is sticking itself between you and Google. I wonder whats next?

~~~
thrill
The OS is between me and the ISP - no OS provider would ever collect a bunch
of data about me, would they?

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Sarcasm's always hard to detect in text, but in case not intended: Chrome OS,
Android with Google Play Services.

------
criddell
Could Verizon now start analyzing phone calls to look for keywords to build a
profile for advertising?

I remember the good old days when privacy was important enough that video
rental stores weren't allowed to share your data. Now it's just good business.

------
zeta0134
So, if I recall correctly, that "tracking supercookie" they're mentining in
that account has to be injected in the headers of any request / response,
right? Doesn't this mean it's easily defeated by HTTPS? Or am I
misunderstanding how that works?

~~~
yeukhon
Correct, only encrypted traffic. See
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-
uidh](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh). Verizon was fined
~1.35M by FCC on this violation.

But one can still infer actual page a user is visiting by means of looking at
some leakage of data. See
[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4388/are-
urls-v...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4388/are-urls-viewed-
during-https-transactions-to-one-or-more-websites-from-a-single-i/4418#4418).

It isn't easy but I am sure some people have done it.

One thing ISP has been doing for years is with DNS. If you are at home and you
entered some wrong domain name, your ISP will likely present you with its
custom search page. This is enough to understand what you are looking for.
Furthermore, Google & Facebook aren't relying on cookies as the only way to
mine your interest anymore, instead they focus on building profile for you
when you use single sign on. For example, when you sign up for Stackoverflow
and chooses to login with your Google account, Google may be able to learn you
are using Stackoverflow.

Verizon in particular has been in the ads business for years, especially with
their acquisition of AOL and on-going acuqisiton of Yahoo, Verizon has a big
plan to make use of all the data they have, likely to provide a Google search
or new portal for their users, much like AOL back in the days in the 90s and
early 2000s.

~~~
x0x0
They also will use your dns data.

There's existing companies that already do this.

~~~
devnullmonkey
You can always use CryptDNS, which prevents this. CryptDNS plus OpenDNS and
you're pretty good. Add a VPN and you're doing better than 99% of people
online. Add uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, and block http/s
referrer, disable mediaconnect (prevents RPC from seeing your RFC 1918s--
private address scheme) and you're largely unidentifiable in the true sense.

You can do this for $5 a month by renting a droplet virtual server on Digital
Ocean and setting up Streisand. Don't log anything. You will control the
VPS/VPN. Use it for your mobile phone and household router (if your router
supports this). If not, individual machines, but having a router that does
this is key.

Use Opera and it's free VPN until you can get something sorted for yourself.

------
debt
i don't see anything wrong with this. if it's shitty adtech then they're
basically offering a base competitor to a market dominated by two players:
facebook, google.

apple does it all the time. shit, walgreens does it when you buy the waldrug
instead of whatever else.

~~~
raverbashing
> walgreens does it when you buy the waldrug instead of whatever else.

How? I never noticed this. Is the ad printed on the receipt or something like
that?

~~~
debt
they provide a generic "walgreens" competitor to all the other incumbent
products. verizon is gonna do the same thing.

------
dforrestwilson1
This is why I think Google Fiber, or some other ISP offering by Google, is an
important strategic component for Alphabet.

~~~
lorenzhs
Google Fiber is pretty much dead though, they've put all expansion plans on
hold: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/10/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/10/google-fiber-laying-off-9-of-staff-will-pause-plans-
for-10-cities/)

~~~
Retric
They have around 1/2 million subscribers which is a rather large ISP to call
it dead. While it is not growing fast that's not Googles goal.

Google fiber is still a useful stick as Google can just say paying you X
billion for Y years before running you out of business is option A, option B
is not paying you anything you chose. It's a large part of why YouTube has
avoided many of Netflix's issues with ISP's.

------
bogomipz
Oath, Verizon, Altaba - There seems to be an almost Conways type law in effect
with Verizon in that their naming reflects the mentality of the company - tone
deaf, out of touch and unfriendly.

------
ebtalley
Water is wet. In other news.

------
newsat13
We all hate ads, no doubt about it. But I don't like the way media is going
about accusing Comcast and Verizon for what the consumers brought upon
themselves. Comcast/Verizon simply want exactly what Google does. AFAIK,
Google does not "prompt" me saying that they mine my data and use it to show
ads. In fact, I just tried creating a gmail account and there is no such
explicit popup dialog that tell me this information. Same goes for facebook.
There should be a popup saying "We use your data to show you ads". As simple
as that. But no. There is no such thing.

This is the same that Verizon/Comcast wants to do. Provide an arbitrary
service (i.e ISP) and also do something else with the data. Just because, I
_pay_ comcast but don't pay Google does not relinquish Google from the
responsibility. IMO, we need new internet/tech laws that explicitly cover
companies that monetize user data.

Maybe someone can help me understand the distinction between these two.

~~~
awalton
> Maybe someone can help me understand the distinction between these two.

Verizon is the pipe we move data over - it's the road. "Google" is the service
at the other end of the pipe - it's our destination. Verizon is unhappy with
being the pipe, despite that literally being the business they signed up to be
in. They have decided that the destinations make more money than they can ever
squeeze out of being the road service. So, they hatched a plan...

Verizon is now trying to use the fact that we're going to "Google" to instead
funnel customers into their destinations - "You don't need "Google", use
"Verizoogle" instead!" Verizon also wants to install toll lanes on their roads
such that even using "Google" proper costs you extra. And it costs "Google"
extra too, because why only charge in one direction?

Still going to stare blankly and refuse to see the problem?

~~~
rayiner
But Google isn't the destination. Google's top services (search and YouTube)
are just means for finding and getting to what we really want, which is the
content (website, video, etc.).

~~~
awalton
> Google isn't the destination.

It is the destination, no matter how you try to reframe it. Google's just a
destination that collects links to help you to get to other destinations, and
pays for its service by showing ads. You _can_ completely shut Google out of
your life - block all DNS connections to Google's services, switch to Bing,
turn on AdBlock, etc.

If your ISP is Verizon or peers with them, and your content exists on the
other side of their network, there's absolutely nothing you can do to avoid
them - they own the road. Common Carrier laws exist to prevent companies from
discriminating based on the content provider. That's why Verizon has spent so
much money to get around them.

Again, you can try to frame it however you like, but "Google" in this case
could mean Reddit, it could mean HackerNews, YourCompanysWebsite, etc. It is
literally a wildcard.

~~~
ksk
>If your ISP is Verizon or peers with them, and your content exists on the
other side of their network, there's absolutely nothing you can do to avoid
them - they own the road

You can avoid their tracking by using a VPN.

