Windows 10: Google charting a course towards a more privacy-first web

Brink · Mar 4, 2021

Itâs difficult to conceive of the internet we know today â with information on every topic, in every language, at the fingertips of billions of people â without advertising as its economic foundation. But as our industry has strived to deliver relevant ads to consumers across the web, it has created a proliferation of individual user data across thousands of companies, typically gathered through third-party cookies. This has led to an erosion of trust: In fact, 72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81% say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits, according to a study by Pew Research Center. If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web.

Thatâs why last year Chrome announced its intent to remove support for third-party cookies, and why weâve been working with the broader industry on the Privacy Sandbox to build innovations that protect anonymity while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers. Even so, we continue to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers. Today, weâre making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.

We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not â like PII graphs based on peopleâs email addresses. We donât believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore arenât a sustainable long term investment. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.

Privacy innovations are effective alternatives to tracking

People shouldnât have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. And advertisers don't need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising.

Advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers. In fact, our latest tests of FLoC show one way to effectively take third-party cookies out of the advertising equation and instead hide individuals within large crowds of people with common interests. Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release this month, and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2. Chrome also will offer the first iteration of new user controls in April and will expand on these controls in future releases, as more proposals reach the origin trial stage, and they receive more feedback from end users and the industry.

This points to a future where there is no need to sacrifice relevant advertising and monetization in order to deliver a private and secure experience.

First-party relationships are vital

Developing strong relationships with customers has always been critical for brands to build a successful business, and this becomes even more vital in a privacy-first world. We will continue to support first-party relationships on our ad platforms for partners, in which they have direct connections with their own customers. And we'll deepen our support for solutions that build on these direct relationships between consumers and the brands and publishers they engage with.

Keeping the internet open and accessible for everyone requires all of us to do more to protect privacy â and that means an end to not only third-party cookies, but also any technology used for tracking individual people as they browse the web. We remain committed to preserving a vibrant and open ecosystem where people can access a broad range of ad-supported content with confidence that their privacy and choices are respected. We look forward to working with others in the industry on the path forward.
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Source: Google charts a course towards a more privacy-first web

:)

Yolvi Ell · Mar 4, 2021

Charts not rendering image in IE11 but fine in other browsers

To find out if this is caused by some browser settings that have been changed, we suggest resetting Internet Explorer. This will disable add-ons and toolbars and restore default web browser settings, privacy settings, security settings, advanced options,
tabbed browsing settings, and pop-up settings. To do this, follow these steps:

Close Internet Explorer.

Click Start.

Type inetcpl.cpl and press Enter.

Under the Advanced tab, click Reset.

Click Reset one more time.

Click Close.

Restart your computer.

If the webpage stays the same and still doesn't display the charts, we recommend contacting the webpage developer so that they can optimize the page to be fully compatible with IE 11.

Don't hesitate to let us know if you have any other concerns regarding Internet Explorer 11.

kurtkaufman---01 · Mar 4, 2021

Google Mobile app result - Web: No Gateway Reply

Using Google Mobile (search) app v2.03 (14) [788], on Symbian system s60v3.2 on Nokia n79.

Perform search and click on an item in the list of results. Very often the Web browser will start up and instead of displaying referenced page, a warning will pop up-

Web: No Gateway Reply!

If I return to the list of results, and click on the Google cached version of the link, the Web browser WILL display the page properly.

If I then Click on Google's reference to the "current page" in the outer frame of the cached page, it also will then properly display the current page.

This leads me to believe that there is something about the links on the initial Google page of results that the Symbian Web browser cannot deal with.

Any thoughts, suggestions welcomed!

ComputerGeek · Mar 4, 2021

WOT (Web Of Trust) replacement

Hi, Chrome extension WOT is probably going out of business, it has some serious privacy issues and is already removed from the Chrome Web Store.
I have been using it for many years and feel lost without it.
Can someone suggest a replacement for this tool....?
Thanks,-BBDS
Click to expand...

Good news. Bad news.

Good news: WOT may not be going out of business. Or, at least, for the reasons you think.

Bad news: Firefox and Chrome removed the extension form their store after a German newspaper reported that WOT was selling the browsing history of its users without even bothering to anonymize the data!

Yikes!!
- Web of Trust (WOT) Add-on taken down by Chrome & Firefox
- Mozilla and Google remove WOT extension from Store

Windows 10: Google charting a course towards a more privacy-first web

Google charting a course towards a more privacy-first web

Google charting a course towards a more privacy-first web

Google charting a course towards a more privacy-first web

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