The biggest enemy as concerns the online privacy are social services. I'm an old-school one, so I'm not used to share my life online. I don't know if I can myself count into the group of 5% of people having online privacy but personally I feel good without facebook, twitter, instagram and other social accounts. As for the topic, every monopoly regardless of the sector leads to monopoly behaviour. In this regard Google does its best, unfortunately.
It's coooool when a huge conglomerate appears to take the side of the mainstream, claiming to buck the corporate trend for its user base but it's almost always a hugely self-serving move. No surprise to us regular people when more of the truth unfolds, maybe a vague and brief disappointment. But squeezing out 3rd party ads is better than nothing for us, though it tangibly benefits Google first, second and last.
Google Chrome has a 60% browser market share right now, so there is no need for them to introduce something that is so over the top self serving. So, if it is going to be the default, hopefully it will be opt-out. Also, if their ad-blocker is going to diminish the effectiveness of UblockO and/or NoScript as browser extensions, I think Mozilla Firefox may see more users come their way. Let's see if Mozilla can manage this without cramming both feet in their mouth, fully booted and sideways.
Google's goal is to block annoying ads, which is cool. But apparently they don't want to block all of the tracking: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/...e-preserves-privacy-google-preserves-trackers
Kinda ironic that Google would support ad block on their own custom-tailored browser when you consider that Google relies on ad revenue to support a large percentage (if not the majority) of their revenue. Maybe they are hoping that Chrome users only use ad block to block ads from sites that are not affiliated with Google although that is pretty unlikely. I believe this might be a stupid move on Google's behalf because people might also ending up blocking ads and therefore deny ad revenue to Google.
They are just playing marketing games and we have all played this one before. Remember before MS introduced their "firewall" in Vista everyone had zone alarm and other similar 3rd party firewalls that did a very good job of isolating applications from the internet? That did not fit well with the industry's data mining/direct marketing strategy so M$ introduces its own firewall that looks the part, but is designed to facilitate data mining by not alerting users to unauthorised outbound connections. So when people say, "We don't need ad blockers any more because Chrome already has one." Remember how similar that sounds to, "We don't need zone alarm and co's firewalls anymore cause Windows already has one...."
Very good point, it's probably to limit the damage and to stop people from installing third party blocking tools. On the other hand, I do think this "obtrusive ads" problem needs to be fixed. The current situation is not fair for websites. The problem could be easily solved by serving only static ads, and to ditch the tracking.
Google, I will try to avoid you as much as possible. "Obtrusive ads"or intrusive all the same. Pain in the ***.
Static ads are so last-century, Rasheed. Didn't you know us not-too-swift end users are heavily visual-dependent and ads that move and play like YouTube are therefore acceptable, even cool? Besides, Google ad-execs need something money-grubbing to do at all times. I can just see the dam busting even more and certain extensions like uBlock modifying their filters further because of stuff like this. .
Yes that's exactly right and when people stop buying a type of product because they think they already have a free one it dries up that industry, when there's no money in it anymore the devs focus their resources on something else. That happened to the third party firewall market which was very active in the 90' and early 2000's. Products like black ice faded away. Having said that I think black ice got a helping hand to fade away by IBM who bought the parent company and then put a stop to its development.
Does this extend to YouTube, which is owned by Google? Ad blockers are a MUST there, especially for music vids. What, if anything, is Google planning to do there?
They use facial recognition AI if you have a web cam to view your facial expressions to adds displayed.
That's true, and rather frightening Me, I prefer Google search, and just rely on my VPN chains. But no Gmail or Google scripts for me, thanks. And no Android or Chrome, either.
It's reliable until they nuke your account, and then you can't reach a human about it But paid Gmail accounts are fine, and do have decent support.