Edge vs. Chrome: Microsoft's Tracking Prevention Hits Google the Hardest | Hacker News Reader

Edge vs. Chrome: Microsoft's Tracking Prevention Hits Google the Hardest

zdnet.com

149 pointsmandliya77 comments

Tracking prevention in Edge makes sense for Microsoft, as they already have more than enough tracking in windows itself.

Do you think they’re trying to monopolise user data to sell to advertisers?

Well, I don't think there is any reason why MSFT wouldn't dream that, just that they don't have a magic wand to do that. They do however are trying to add more and more tracking to Windows, which is what they do control.

targeting ads is only one teeny tiny use case for user data. Building general AI is a race and the more user data you have the faster your AI will learn. You definitely want to limit the amount of data your competitors have.

How users use computers has very little to do for a useful AI.

Or... if most knowledge work happens on a computer, and you just want the AI to replace knowledge workers, then maybe how people use computers is the only thing the AI needs to know.

Probably true for AGI but the overloaded term "AI" could be applied to learn from how people use software to _carefully_ suggest improvements.

Usage stats could help you improve a user interface, teach users new skills (eg: "you always do this, here's a shortcut to save you time"), perhaps more personalized operating system interfaces and defaults.

You probably don't need a fancy pseudo "AI" system for any of these, but that's the current gold rush so someone's gonna do it

I look forward to the day when the term 'AGI' gets co-opted by marketers and we need to come up with a new term for true AGI (TAGI?).

That's pretty absurd considering the average american has a screen in front of their face 8-10 hours a day. You're basically saying what people do for 8-10 hours a day, every day, for their entire lives isnt useful information to AI.

The vast majority of the revenue for half of the biggest tech companies is one teeny use case?

It's the biggest one, followed by company specific recommendation engines.

teeny tiny use case for general AI, yes.

it's ridiculous. i only realize it when i install pihole and microsoft is there at #1 tracking domain

That's why I think that Microsoft is walking a fine line here, blocking other people trackers while keeping their own may be considered anti-competitive. If Edge had the market share IE had in the past, that would be calling for legal trouble.

Google themselves also suffer a lot from bad actors. Many people start installing ad blockers after visiting abusive sites, and these ad blockers block the more tolerable Google ads as a collateral. For that reason, they want to introduce a built-in ad blocker in Chrome, and unsurprisingly, given their position, they are taking a lot of precautions.

Isn't Google basically a primary threat actor for any society/collective trying to maintain equality through symmetry of information?

Atleast getting tracked by one is better than getting tracked by two.

I can't tell from the article. Does anyone know if Google Analytics is blocked by default? It says the default is Balanced mode and that the trackers blocked are mostly from Google. But it doesn't make it clear if Google Analytics is blocked by default.

Google Analytics uses first party cookies so it usually passes by default blockers at least. If they are blocking that by default this is a massive blow. Otherwise it's blocking things that are probably already blocked in other popular platforms such as Safari on OSX and IOS, and this is much less impressive.

"Of that total, 552 were from Google domains. That's a mind-boggling 23.8% of the total. To put that into perspective, the second entry on the list of blocked trackers was Facebook, which represented 3.8% of the total. (It's worth noting that these results shouldn't suggest any kind of conspiracy against Google. The fact that Google is at the top of any list of online trackers is a reflection of their business model and their ubiquity. Google Analytics and Google AdSense are embedded on a staggering number of web pages.)"

It sounds like Google Analytics is blocked by default at least in the "Balanced" mode

That's the quote I read and was confused about.

It says most trackers blocked are from Google but don't mention which ones. Then at the end says Google analytics and AdSense are embedded in a lot of websites which is obvious but doesn't make it clear if they are blocked by default or not.

The blocked scripts might all be the double click 3rd party trackers which are also omnious.

There are claims about Google "mistakenly" breaking Youtube etc. on Firefox. I wonder what happens if Microsoft "mistakenly" breaks Chrome and the updater?

Because when these companies truly take on to each other, they do play dirty.

I would prefer to watch such a fight, instead of browsers becoming non-standard. Default ad-blocking shouldn't be a thing, what's next? Browsers with default Reddit enhancement suits?

The default should be, browsers render whatever the HTML and JS say and leave it to the users to choose to modify this through ad blocking extensions and so on.

Were you also opposed to browser vendors blocking pop up windows and auto playing video and sound?

No, that's pretty much the opposite, because the user has more control.

Google is already doing this with Edge, too. Google Maps on Edge will give an error message, "Google Maps does not have permission to use your location," no matter how you have your permissions set. I'm very sure there will be other examples. Google very subtly breaks things intentionally on competing browsers.

Also this https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148736/google-youtube-...

With the new Edge Zdnet articles like this one maybe will be more readable without garbage all over the page.

Yeah, it's even worse on mobile... it came up in my news feed that uses chrome by default, it was pretty horrible. Mostly use Brave on my phone.

It's very readable with the reader mode in Firefox.

Chromium-based Edge will curb abuses by both Google and Microsoft. Now we can use Edge when using Google's services such as Gmail, and Chrome when using Microsoft's services. This will prevent abuses such as Chrome logging you into the browser itself when you log into Gmail, thereby enhancing their surveillance.

Incidentally, Chrome had a longstanding bug where the setting that prevents Chrome logging you into the browser just didn't work. Recently it has started working. Is it a coincidence that this got fixed just weeks before Chromium-based Edge is due to be released? I think not! Hurrah for competition!

Hard to believe if you know about their Windows deals, especially super funny ignoring blocked Microsoft telemetry hosts by default firewall.

And they're doing it with Chromium, this is all a little poetic.

MS turning Google owned guns, against them. But I shed no tear here. Browser wars are actually quite amazing battlefield to follow.

> MS turning Google owned guns,against them.

Not enough market cap for this yet.

MS also attempting to use its monopoly position on the desktop to damage a competitor, there's no heroes in this fight.

I say attempting because, thank goodness, MS no longer has the stranglehold that it used to have - due to Google attempting itself trying to get a stranglehold on all computing devices that people use through Android.

I'm surprised that Fuchsia hasn't made an appearance yet as that will probably also be pitched as a competitor to Windows, hoping to further erode MS's position in the market.

I kinda hope they make Fuchsia a full-fledged desktop OS other than the same online-only offering that Chromium was.

Hit hard with what? The 1% marketshare it will eventually get like the previous Edge versions?

They will use the Chromium engine, so it will be fast and render pages well.

If they stick an ad blocker by default, something the Mozilla Corporation hasn't got the balls to do, they will definitely get some market share.

Not if they refuse Manifest v3 and remain the only Blink browser with full uBlock Origin support.

> simple text files called Tracking Protection Lists (TPLs) to allow or block third-party requests from specific domains

Sounds like a hosts file, and the same end result could be achieved in any browser/system-wide by using a curated one such as:

https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Or is Edge Tracking Prevention more effective in some way?

Does it block trackers for Bing display network ads or not?

I'm still looking for a browser that lets me pay websites visited in exchange of being served no ads.

I don't understand why Mozilla doesn't offer this kind of subscription in Firefox. That could solve their funding problem too.

>I'm still looking for a browser that lets me pay websites visited in exchange of being served no ads.

Isn't that the entire premise of Brave's browser? https://brave.com/

I thought so at first, but :

> Earn rewards by opting into our privacy-respecting ads

That's not what I want. My problem is with ads, as a dumb consumption catalyser and weak revenue model, not with privacy-concerning ads.

I believe you can simply buy brave currency also, so you don't need to look at ads at all.

No, the premise of Brave is that there can never be enough middlemen scalping some money off creators.

Because that's not up to the browser to decide.

In what way is this not the extend phase of embrace, extend, extinguish?

Competitors are not disadvantaged by Microsoft adding privacy-friendly features to Edge. Google would be capable of transitioning to a business model that respects people's privacy. If they would want to, they could flourish under such model.

> Google would be capable of transitioning to a business model that respects people's privacy. If they would want to, they could flourish under such model.

Why are you so sure it's easy for Google to pivot away from their trillion dollar business model?

Google has been watering down and further downplaying their motto of “Don’t be evil” for several years now. It’s hard to build the panopticon of infrastructure ripe for the subjugation of all humanity and not believe you’re doing evil.

Google isn't evil. I think it's just the Google founders have finally decided to step back, because they are getting old, cash out their shares and let other investors do whatever they want.

There is an interesting idea about adtech. Instead of search being reactive, it needs to actively look for information you care about and every morning give you the top 10 most important news. Why do we go to HN every morning? Why do others go to their FB page every day? We try to find new valuable information. This is a form of addiction, but a useful one. In other words, there are users on the left, with their preferences. There are various domains of information and news on the right. The job of Google v2 is to connect the two. In fact, I'd pay 150/month for such a service because it's this valuable. Obviously, I don't really believe that Google can do this, as it's become riddled with greed and its management doesnt look further than the next quarterly profits.

Your initial premise that it’s because the founders “stepped back” falls down immediately because googles privacy whoring antics and other shitty behaviour have been going on for almost as long as they’ve been a company.

What’s changed is, people are slowly starting to see google for what it is.

I briefly worked for google this year, and “don’t be evil” doesn’t appear in any of their on-boarding materials (anymore at least).

> I briefly worked for google this year

I apologize in advance if the reason is personal and you do not want to share, but why did you stay at Google for such a short period of time?

I’d be asking why any time, not expecting more.

20 minute commute instead of 2 hours. I thought I can deal with the business model issues in exchange for that, it turned out I could not.

I joined just after last years protests in the (misplaced) belief that that much of an outcry would result in the google management actually improving.

They did not, and showed an unwillingness to consider fixing any behavior. They even pushed back on removing forced arbitration for harassment and abuse. They spent most of the time I was there retaliating against people who organized the protest, and people who reported harassment.

There was an ongoing double standard wrt to homophobic, racist, and abusive content on their many platforms. They were super good at marking lgbt content as adult only, and super good at flagging 2s of “copyrighted content” as worthy of removal from the platform. While absolutely opposing any restriction and racist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, antisemitic, or just completely false content. Despite all such content violating their repeatedly reworded rules.

The weekly “talks” basically consisted of them saying that everything was ok, and they were “working on” the harassment and arbitration problems. While avoiding any discussion of the promotion of false and bigoted content, or claiming that all the studies of their algorithms were wrong and that they didn’t promote such content.

For those talks there were unending bigoted questions and comments on the question submission form. Questions related to any of the aforementioned issues were routinely skipped and/or vote bombed to oblivion by a clearly super invested group of employees who supported the actions of the company.

After a while I decided I couldn’t accept money that was “earned” through such atrocious behavior.

I am not saying other big tech companies don’t have problems, but my experience was that google was hell bent on protecting the abusers over the victims in every circumstance and context it came up.

Thank you for replying. Comments like these are very helpful as I regularly think about working for Google, but (so far at least) I never do.

I hope you're happier wherever you're working now.

"don't be evil" is still in official code of conduct.

“Don’t; Be evil!”

I don't think the illegal personal data collection is what gives Google their advantage. They don't necessarily need to abandon their current business model, upholding human rights and respecting the spirit of the law would be enough.

> illegal

Citation needed

> Google Is Fined $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/technology/google-youtube...

> Google Is Fined $57 Million Under Europe’s Data Privacy Law

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/technology/google-europe-...

> Google fined over Safari cookie privacy row

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19200279

This was just a cursory search, and there are also several ongoing lawsuits and investigations regarding Google's data harvesting practices.

The vast majority of google services contribute fuck all to their bottom line - they’re purely a way to tie more and more things into “the google” and gather more information on people.

If they didn’t use the information, they wouldn’t need to gather it, and thus they wouldn’t need to build, run, “support” (lol) so many things that are objectively not profitable unless they abuse people’s private information.

I would say just the opposite. Google is completely incapable of diversifying away from advertising. It still makes up 90% of their profit and they have failed to diversify - unlike Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.

My understanding is Google wants to do exactly what I want it to do: not share any information about me with its advertisers. It can't though because Google customers demand accountability and audit ability.

If ads just showed up on the screen and didn't execute arbitrary JavaScript or phoned home without me purposefully clicking it, I like to believe I wouldn't be so adverse to ads.

If a huge part of the market can't have ads that phone home or execute arbitrary JavaScript, Google can offer slimmed down ads as a replacement.

I would welcome this change if it happens.

I don’t believe that Google shares information with advertisers does it? I always thought that advertisers tell Google who they want to target but Google doesn’t share information back?

You need a majority market share to extinguish something. Edge has 2%.

It will have much more once the chromium based one comes out. You won't believe how many people still use explorer out of the box, they just get told to use Chrome once some website is not working. But if they will work all the same there won't be any reason to switch.

I think more people install chrome when they visit Google.com and are prompted to install it.

In this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...

What, you think this was all a long con and they're going to go back to Trident? That's the only way I can think of to apply EEE here.

Um, chrome is doing the embrace and extinguish now under the guise of standards. Essentially they flood standards bodies with unending half assed specs that make it difficult for smaller browsers (Mozilla, opera, qt, etc) to keep up. Then make their properties depend on those half assed features.

While at the same time making sure those new specs also aid their primary business of spying on and tracking users without consent. Then saying any browsers that don’t support those abusive features are holding back the web.

EEE is when a proprietary addition is made that affects interop with other conformant implementations of an open standard. This privacy feature does not alter how Chrome, FF, or Safari will render HTML or run Javascript, so it is not EEE. There's nothing stopping Chrome from implementing a similar (or better) feature in order to maintain or grow its market share!

We're in funny territory that Microsoft is using a Google open source project in a consumer-positive way that also happens to hurt Google's primary business, but because the feature addition to Edge does not affect interop with other browsers, I don't see how this is EEE.

In the way in which the EEE monopolist in the web space is Google, not Microsoft.

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