FuckOffGoogle - User contributions [en]

Main Page

2020-05-08T11:33:14Z

Yuhong: /* Documentation, Research and other resources exposing Google */

<strong>Welcome to FUCK OFF GOOGLE Wiki!</strong> Organise with us - '''check the [[MobilizeActions|next events]]!'''

<gallery mode="packed-hover">
File:Lotsoffingers.jpg
File:FuckOffGoogle sticker.jpg
File:Noise_against_Google_campus_generic_pink.png
File:Google campus verhindern sidewalk 5.jpg
File:Fuckyougoogle.jpg
</gallery>

Here is a space to collect and aggregate data, campaigning material, and everything that can help kicking the "Google campus" out of Kreuzberg, and Google out of our lives! Check a [[UrbanArtGallery|gallery of urban art and other interventions in the streets]]!

Be very welcome to help organize fact-based data on this company and their behavior worldwide! Read the [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=submit#Help_Us_Improve_The_Wiki getting started guide].

Feel free to [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:Upload upload files] and '''check the [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles uploaded files]'''

== Mobilization ideas, campaigns, events and actions ==

[[MobilizeActions|Next events and actions]]

== Posters, flyers, images, videos and other campaigning material ==

[[CampaignImages|Images and Flyers]] to print, spread and remix.

[[Videos|Videos and Audio]] - Rip, remix, share

Check our [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles media gallery] as well.

== Documentation, Research and other resources exposing Google ==

=== Google and mass surveillance ===
[[GoogleAndMassSurveillance|Google and mass surveillance]]

=== Google and gentrification===
[[GoogleAndGentrification|Google and gentrification]]

=== Google, taxes and the law ===
[[GoogleTaxesAndLaw|Google, taxes and the law]]

=== Google's limitless expansion===
[[GoogleExpansion|Google's limitless expansion in power and spectrum of activity]]

=== Google and Transhumanism===
[[GoogleAndTranshumanism|Google and Transhumanism]]

=== Google's apparent good sides ===
[[GoogleAndCounterculture|Google and Counterculture]]

=== "Smart Cities" ===
[[SmartCities|"Smart Cities"]]

=== Google "Campuses" In Other Cities ===
[[Google_Campus_In_Other_Cities|Google Campus In Other Cities]]

=== Google and Discrimination ===
[[Google_and_discrimination|On Google pretending to actively promote diversity, but doing the opposite in practice...]]

=== Überized/Exploited Tech-Workers Conditions ===
[[Uberized_Workers_conditions|Work conditions of the (self-)"employees" of tech-companies (Uber, Deliveroo, Foodora, etc.)]]

=== Tech-gentrification ===
[[Tech-gentrification|Influence of tech companies on gentrification]]

=== Google's participation in the US drone program ===
[[maven-drone|(project "Maven")]]

=== Various topics ===

Use this [[VariousTopics|page]] for research subjects that are not *directly* related to Google and/or their plan for a "Google campus" in Kreuzberg.

=== Google DoubleClick Overview ===
[[Google DoubleClick Overview]]

=== Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead ===
[[Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead]]

== Replacements/Alternatives to Google services ==
[[GoogleAlternatives]]

[[BlackBlockGoogle]] from your computers

[[BlockCallsOnWifi]]

== Bibliography ==

[[Books|Books related to Google]]

== Related Initiatives, Groups and Movements ==

* [https://www.blocksidewalk.ca/ #blocksidewalk] Toronto Citizens Initiative against Sidewalk Labs
* [https://capulcu.blackblogs.org/ Capulcu]
* [https://twitter.com/counter_campus/ Counter Campus]
* Google Campus Verhindern

* [https://googletransparencyproject.org/news Google Transparency Project]
* [https://degooglisons-internet.org/ Framasoft and De-google-ify movement]
* [https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/ Tactical Tech - Our Data Ourselves]
* [[NoG00gleRennes|No g00gle in Rennes]], France
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20190212183456/http://fffff.at/ F.A.T. Lab] announced a series of FUCK GOOGLE works in 2010, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20180812044558/http://fffff.at/fat-lost-prism-won/ Prism Won] in 2015

* [https://fg1er.noblogs.org/thsf-toulouse-mai-2018/ Google 1er Band] France
* [http://siliconvalleyrising.org/ Silicon Valley Rising] and their [http://siliconvalleyrising.org/news/ huge list].
* [https://wtf.ninja/ Digital Operational Security Wiki]
* [https://www.googlewilleatitself.com Google Will Eat Itself - GWEI]
* [https://www.google-ist-kein-guter-nachbar.de Google ist kein guter Nachbar] (DE/EN)

== Social Media and Press ==

* [https://mastodon.social/@FuckOffGoogle Fuck Off Google Mastodon.Social Account]
* [https://twitter.com/counter_campus T.O.P. B3rlin Twitter Account]
* Follow the [http://googlecampusverhindern.blogsport.de/presse/ Press Review by "Google Campus Verhindern" site]

== Help Us Improve The Wiki ==

Everyone can participate by contributing research material about any of our topics.

The work that happens here on the wiki can be used to support the organising effort.

To get started [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount&returnto=Main+Page create an account] (or use [[User:cypherpunks|this shared account]]) and log in. Then click [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing_pages "edit"] on any page, [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Starting_a_new_page starting new pages], [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:Upload upload files], [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents etc.]

If you're new to MediaWiki, check out the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:FAQ MediaWiki FAQ].

== Join Our Chat-Room ==

You can ask any question or suggest anything by [https://organize.fuckoffgoogle.de/#/room/#FuckOffGoogle:fuckoffgoogle.de joining our friendly chat-room]. The room is public and un-encrypted, but you can create encrypted chats once there! The room is a self-hosted instance on the decentralised [https://matrix.org/blog/home/ Matrix] network. There are clients available on [https://riot.im/desktop.html GNU/Linux desktop] and [https://f-droid.org/packages/im.vector.alpha/ F-Droid store] for mobile.

Please note, the room is currently an experiment as we decide how best to communicate with each other on the internet.

Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead

2020-04-18T09:35:15Z

Yuhong:

Date: 10 August 2010

(Please see Corrections & Amplifications item below)

A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. "vision statement" shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities?

Should it tap more of what it knows about Gmail users? Should it build a vast "trading platform" for buying and selling Web data? Should it let people pay to not see any ads at all?

These and other ideas big and small—the third one was listed under "wacky"—are discussed in the document, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and compiled in late 2008 by Aitan Weinberg, now a senior product manager for interest-based advertising. Along with interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, the vision statement offers a candid, introspective look at Google's fight to remain at the vanguard of the information economy.

Google is pushing into uncharted privacy territory for the company. Until recently, it refrained from aggressively cashing in on its own data about Internet users, fearing a backlash. But the rapid emergence of scrappy rivals who track people's online activities and sell that data, along with Facebook Inc.'s growth, is forcing a shift.

A person familiar with the matter called the vision statement a "brainstorming document" and said it wasn't presented to senior executives. Some of its ideas are "complete non-starters," this person said. Efforts to reach Mr. Weinberg weren't successful.

Still, several have been implemented. Among them: Last year, Google for the first time started collecting a new type of data about the websites people visit, and using it to track and show them ads across the Internet.

Worries about the size of Google's data cache are "hypothetical," said co-founder Larry Page last month in response to a reporter's question about privacy. "It is always easy to be fearful of what could happen, right?"

As Google changes, it is likely to bring the rest of the online world with it. With more users than any other Internet company, it has an unparalleled ability to make new ad-targeting methods mainstream. The company also actively participates in trade groups that regularly craft new privacy practices among themselves in hopes of thwarting legislation. The Federal Trade Commission said last year that the field can regulate itself as long as companies disclose their practices to users, among other things.

Google is overwhelmingly important to online privacy. Roughly 75% of global Internet users, or 943.8 million people, used its services in June, more than any other Web company, according to comScore.

The vision statement describes the company's immense search database as "the BEST source of user interests found on the Internet," during a discussion of ways to make ads more relevant to users. "No other player could compete," it says. Later, the document warns that some ideas range from "safe" to "not" safe.

The most aggressive ideas would put Google at the cutting edge of the business of tracking people online to profit from their actions. A data-trading marketplace, for instance, would allow personal information from many sources—including Google—to be combined and used for highly personalized tracking of individuals.

Tiny companies like BlueKai Inc. and eXelate Media Ltd. already offer some of these services, pressuring Google to match them. A Wall Street Journal investigation, "What They Know," is examining the widening trade in this kind of data and the consequences for individual privacy.

Google trails in some of these techniques by choice. Famous for its unofficial corporate motto, "Don't Be Evil," for years it resisted using any method to track people online without their knowledge at the fierce insistence of founders Sergey Brin and Mr. Page. But the two men have gradually decided they can begin exploiting the data their company controls, without exploiting consumers, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.

The founders believe they are improving the Internet user's experience, said Alma Whitten, who leads Google's privacy engineering, in a June interview. "What's good for the consumer is good for the advertiser."

A recent Journal examination of the proliferation of online tracking found that Google's tracking code appeared on 45 of the 50 most popular U.S. websites. (For details on those findings, go to WSJ.com/WTK.)

The 2008 vision statement along with a dozen other internal documents reviewed by the Journal tell the inside story of how Google dragged its feet while its founders' views evolved.

Selling ads is Google's big money-maker, but the online-ad business is broadening away from Google's sweet spot, selling ads tied to the search-engine terms people use. Instead, advertisers want to target people based on more specific personal information such as hobbies, income, illnesses or circles of friends.

The changes at Google reflect a power realignment online. For years, the strongest companies on the Internet were the ones with the most visitor traffic. Today, the power resides with those that have the richest data and are the savviest about using it.

That has propelled Internet ad companies into an arms race so swift that even Google fears being left behind. One slide from an internal presentation in mid-2008, which was reviewed by the Journal, is headlined bluntly: "Get in the Game."

That particular slide describes the importance of breaking into the lucrative business of selling "display" ads, which are larger ads with pictures, as opposed to smaller text ads. Today, Google still trails market leader Yahoo in U.S. display-ad revenue, according to analysts.

Google still leads the Internet pack overall, of course. Its revenue, $23.7 billion in 2009, is more than three times Yahoo's, its closest competitor. Its online advertising business is growing faster than those of its publicly held U.S. rivals.

But Google's revenue growth has slowed dramatically. And social-networking powerhouse Facebook is a widening threat with its ability to sell highly targeted ads to its more than 500 million users.

Facebook fears run deep at Google, which is designing its own social-networking service. In a sign of how quickly things change, the 2008 vision statement scarcely mentioned social networks.

Google also plans to go head-to-head with Facebook's "Like" button—a tiny tool on many websites that lets people tell friends they "like" something. Each click gives Facebook valuable, personal data about people's interests.

Few online companies have the potential to know as much about its users as Google. Consider 26-year-old Ari Brand, an actor living in Manhattan's East Village. Google has access to the fact he paid $733 for a flat-screen TV, because he uploaded his budget to Google Docs, an online word processor and spreadsheet. It has access to the 23,000 emails he has sent through Gmail. Google also saves searches tied to the network address of Mr. Brand's computer, which it makes anonymous after 18 months.

Significantly, however, Google doesn't mix those separate pots of personal data. For instance, it doesn't use data gleaned from a person's Gmail account to target ads to that person elsewhere online. Google's computers do, however, scan Gmail messages to place contextual ads next to the emails themselves.

Google also says much of its data can't be tied to a person by name.

Executives long considered the privacy risks too great relative to the business rewards. According to people familiar with Google's thinking, they felt the company was being held to a higher standard than less well-known firms, and preferred to let more aggressive rivals test the boundaries.

Concerns about antitrust scrutiny also heightened the risk of finding new ways to profit from Google's exclusive data.

As recently as 2006 or so, Google's sights weren't set on Facebook—they were set on AOL and Yahoo, which together controlled roughly 40% of the U.S. display-ad business, analysts say.

One big obstacle in winning more of that business was Google co-founder Mr. Page, who objected to letting Google's advertising customers work with companies that installed "cookies" on people's computers for purposes of serving ads and tracking their performance. Cookies are little text files that can, among other things, be used to help track people's activities online to show them ads targeted to their interests.

Those policies hurt Google's display ad sales because the company wouldn't let advertisers use technology they were used to. Google didn't use ad-targeting cookies itself, either. That meant Google could only sell ads based only on the name or content of a page—for instance, putting a shoe ad on a page about shoes. That is known as "contextual" targeting, and many advertisers consider it less effective than "behavioral" targeting, which identifies specific users and their interests.

In 2006, Gokul Rajaram, then a senior Google staffer, and ad-sales executive Tim Armstrong tried to change Mr. Page's mind about letting other companies place cookies.

In an interview, Mr. Rajaram recalls that he thought it would be an easy sell. A growing number of advertisers were refusing to buy display ads from Google. Market research showed AOL and Yahoo were trouncing Google in the display market.

Messrs. Page and Brin weren't swayed. "I was kind of shocked," Mr. Rajaram says. "They just didn't look at it the same way."

As factions inside Google fought over the issue, an opportunity arose. DoubleClick Inc., a giant in the business of placing display ads on websites, put itself up for sale—and Google archrival Microsoft Corp. was circling.

Google executives were leery of the way DoubleClick used cookies to track people online, on the principle that many users had no idea they were being tracked, people familiar with the situation say.

But an acquisition of DoubleClick would instantly bring in display-advertising expertise and clients, they thought.

In 2007, Google agreed to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. At the time, some employees joked Google had to spend billions just to get Mr. Page to like cookies, people familiar with the matter say.

Google and DoubleClick executives huddled to decide how to blend the two companies' products. They had a lot of ground to make up.

According to a resulting presentation slide, dated July 2008—the one headlined "Get in the Game"—Google offered fewer ways to measure an ad's effectiveness than Atlas, a rival owned by Microsoft. And Google had none of the behavioral-targeting capacities of AOL's Tacoda unit—meaning it couldn't target ads to people based on websites they visited.

Google executives finally agreed it was cookie time. As a result, every page where Google sold a display ad began installing a DoubleClick cookie on users' computers.

For the first time, Google had the ability to deliver ads targeted to individual people's computers. But just because it had the ability, Google didn't start using it. There was still too much internal resistance.

Mr. Weinberg, the author of the 2008 "vision statement," came to Google from DoubleClick. He and a small group of product managers and marketing officials began discussing the ways Google could target ads to people more aggressively.

His memo, stamped "INTERNAL CONFIDENTIAL," acknowledged the delicateness of the subject. Audience targeting is "of a sensitive nature," it stated in the very first sentence, due to the possibility of "mis-understanding" among users.

The memo then went on to outline a sweeping vision in which Google could get other websites from around the Internet to share their data with it for the purpose of targeting ads.

The document also says Google could start selling ads across the Web based on the things it knew about people from their Gmail accounts, and also from their use of Google's Checkout service, a PayPal rival.

All of that would be a significant change. Currently, although Google places contextual ads within a user's Gmail account, it doesn't follow that person to other websites with those ads.

The document shows awareness of the privacy implications. Nothing would happen "without strong consideration of privacy, legal and industry best practices in mind," it states. A goal should be to limit users' feeling of "creepiness" from seeing finely targeted ads, it says.

By late 2008, Google executives were preparing to launch ads targeted at users' interests. But the specifics still remained controversial.

Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. "It was awkward," this person said. "It was like watching your parents fight."

Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

Google launched the new advertising product, "interest-based ads" in March 2009. The service, currently available only to a limited group of advertisers, uses cookies to track any time a user visits one of the more than one million sites where Google sells display ads.

To offset the founders' concerns about cookies' secretiveness, Google set up a page, www.google.com/ads/preferences, where people can opt out and see what Google has inferred about their interests.

Google adopted other vision-statement ideas. Last September, it launched its new ad exchange, which lets advertisers target individual people—consumers in the market for shoes, for instance—and buy access to them in real time as they surf the Web. Google takes a cut of each ad sale.

In short, Google is trying to establish itself as the clearinghouse for as many ad transactions as possible, even when those deals don't actually involve consumer data that Google provides or sees.

The further step in that progression would be for Google to become a clearinghouse for everyone's data, too. That idea, also laid out in the vision statement, is still being considered, people familiar with the talks say. That would put Google—already one of the biggest repositories of consumer data anywhere—at the center of the trade in other people's data as well.

Excerpts: Google's Confidential 'Vision Statement'

Graphic: Google's Widening Reach

Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter

Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets

On Web's Frontier, Anonymity in Name Only

Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter

Full Coverage: WSJ.com/WTK

Corrections & Amplifications

Google Inc. is "moving very fast" to explore new uses for its database of users' online searches, Google founder Larry Page said to reporters last month. An earlier version of this article failed to make clear that Mr. Page was referring specifically to using search logs for such purposes as identifying public-health trends, rather than using its broad data for advertising.

Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com

Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead

2020-04-18T09:32:36Z

Yuhong: Created page with "(Please see Corrections & Amplifications item below) A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. "vision statement" shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searchi..."

(Please see Corrections & Amplifications item below)

A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. "vision statement" shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities?

Should it tap more of what it knows about Gmail users? Should it build a vast "trading platform" for buying and selling Web data? Should it let people pay to not see any ads at all?

These and other ideas big and small—the third one was listed under "wacky"—are discussed in the document, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and compiled in late 2008 by Aitan Weinberg, now a senior product manager for interest-based advertising. Along with interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, the vision statement offers a candid, introspective look at Google's fight to remain at the vanguard of the information economy.

Google is pushing into uncharted privacy territory for the company. Until recently, it refrained from aggressively cashing in on its own data about Internet users, fearing a backlash. But the rapid emergence of scrappy rivals who track people's online activities and sell that data, along with Facebook Inc.'s growth, is forcing a shift.

A person familiar with the matter called the vision statement a "brainstorming document" and said it wasn't presented to senior executives. Some of its ideas are "complete non-starters," this person said. Efforts to reach Mr. Weinberg weren't successful.

Still, several have been implemented. Among them: Last year, Google for the first time started collecting a new type of data about the websites people visit, and using it to track and show them ads across the Internet.

Worries about the size of Google's data cache are "hypothetical," said co-founder Larry Page last month in response to a reporter's question about privacy. "It is always easy to be fearful of what could happen, right?"

As Google changes, it is likely to bring the rest of the online world with it. With more users than any other Internet company, it has an unparalleled ability to make new ad-targeting methods mainstream. The company also actively participates in trade groups that regularly craft new privacy practices among themselves in hopes of thwarting legislation. The Federal Trade Commission said last year that the field can regulate itself as long as companies disclose their practices to users, among other things.

Google is overwhelmingly important to online privacy. Roughly 75% of global Internet users, or 943.8 million people, used its services in June, more than any other Web company, according to comScore.

The vision statement describes the company's immense search database as "the BEST source of user interests found on the Internet," during a discussion of ways to make ads more relevant to users. "No other player could compete," it says. Later, the document warns that some ideas range from "safe" to "not" safe.

The most aggressive ideas would put Google at the cutting edge of the business of tracking people online to profit from their actions. A data-trading marketplace, for instance, would allow personal information from many sources—including Google—to be combined and used for highly personalized tracking of individuals.

Tiny companies like BlueKai Inc. and eXelate Media Ltd. already offer some of these services, pressuring Google to match them. A Wall Street Journal investigation, "What They Know," is examining the widening trade in this kind of data and the consequences for individual privacy.

Google trails in some of these techniques by choice. Famous for its unofficial corporate motto, "Don't Be Evil," for years it resisted using any method to track people online without their knowledge at the fierce insistence of founders Sergey Brin and Mr. Page. But the two men have gradually decided they can begin exploiting the data their company controls, without exploiting consumers, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.

The founders believe they are improving the Internet user's experience, said Alma Whitten, who leads Google's privacy engineering, in a June interview. "What's good for the consumer is good for the advertiser."

A recent Journal examination of the proliferation of online tracking found that Google's tracking code appeared on 45 of the 50 most popular U.S. websites. (For details on those findings, go to WSJ.com/WTK.)

The 2008 vision statement along with a dozen other internal documents reviewed by the Journal tell the inside story of how Google dragged its feet while its founders' views evolved.

Selling ads is Google's big money-maker, but the online-ad business is broadening away from Google's sweet spot, selling ads tied to the search-engine terms people use. Instead, advertisers want to target people based on more specific personal information such as hobbies, income, illnesses or circles of friends.

The changes at Google reflect a power realignment online. For years, the strongest companies on the Internet were the ones with the most visitor traffic. Today, the power resides with those that have the richest data and are the savviest about using it.

That has propelled Internet ad companies into an arms race so swift that even Google fears being left behind. One slide from an internal presentation in mid-2008, which was reviewed by the Journal, is headlined bluntly: "Get in the Game."

That particular slide describes the importance of breaking into the lucrative business of selling "display" ads, which are larger ads with pictures, as opposed to smaller text ads. Today, Google still trails market leader Yahoo in U.S. display-ad revenue, according to analysts.

Google still leads the Internet pack overall, of course. Its revenue, $23.7 billion in 2009, is more than three times Yahoo's, its closest competitor. Its online advertising business is growing faster than those of its publicly held U.S. rivals.

But Google's revenue growth has slowed dramatically. And social-networking powerhouse Facebook is a widening threat with its ability to sell highly targeted ads to its more than 500 million users.

Facebook fears run deep at Google, which is designing its own social-networking service. In a sign of how quickly things change, the 2008 vision statement scarcely mentioned social networks.

Google also plans to go head-to-head with Facebook's "Like" button—a tiny tool on many websites that lets people tell friends they "like" something. Each click gives Facebook valuable, personal data about people's interests.

Few online companies have the potential to know as much about its users as Google. Consider 26-year-old Ari Brand, an actor living in Manhattan's East Village. Google has access to the fact he paid $733 for a flat-screen TV, because he uploaded his budget to Google Docs, an online word processor and spreadsheet. It has access to the 23,000 emails he has sent through Gmail. Google also saves searches tied to the network address of Mr. Brand's computer, which it makes anonymous after 18 months.

Significantly, however, Google doesn't mix those separate pots of personal data. For instance, it doesn't use data gleaned from a person's Gmail account to target ads to that person elsewhere online. Google's computers do, however, scan Gmail messages to place contextual ads next to the emails themselves.

Google also says much of its data can't be tied to a person by name.

Executives long considered the privacy risks too great relative to the business rewards. According to people familiar with Google's thinking, they felt the company was being held to a higher standard than less well-known firms, and preferred to let more aggressive rivals test the boundaries.

Concerns about antitrust scrutiny also heightened the risk of finding new ways to profit from Google's exclusive data.

As recently as 2006 or so, Google's sights weren't set on Facebook—they were set on AOL and Yahoo, which together controlled roughly 40% of the U.S. display-ad business, analysts say.

One big obstacle in winning more of that business was Google co-founder Mr. Page, who objected to letting Google's advertising customers work with companies that installed "cookies" on people's computers for purposes of serving ads and tracking their performance. Cookies are little text files that can, among other things, be used to help track people's activities online to show them ads targeted to their interests.

Those policies hurt Google's display ad sales because the company wouldn't let advertisers use technology they were used to. Google didn't use ad-targeting cookies itself, either. That meant Google could only sell ads based only on the name or content of a page—for instance, putting a shoe ad on a page about shoes. That is known as "contextual" targeting, and many advertisers consider it less effective than "behavioral" targeting, which identifies specific users and their interests.

In 2006, Gokul Rajaram, then a senior Google staffer, and ad-sales executive Tim Armstrong tried to change Mr. Page's mind about letting other companies place cookies.

In an interview, Mr. Rajaram recalls that he thought it would be an easy sell. A growing number of advertisers were refusing to buy display ads from Google. Market research showed AOL and Yahoo were trouncing Google in the display market.

Messrs. Page and Brin weren't swayed. "I was kind of shocked," Mr. Rajaram says. "They just didn't look at it the same way."

As factions inside Google fought over the issue, an opportunity arose. DoubleClick Inc., a giant in the business of placing display ads on websites, put itself up for sale—and Google archrival Microsoft Corp. was circling.

Google executives were leery of the way DoubleClick used cookies to track people online, on the principle that many users had no idea they were being tracked, people familiar with the situation say.

But an acquisition of DoubleClick would instantly bring in display-advertising expertise and clients, they thought.

In 2007, Google agreed to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. At the time, some employees joked Google had to spend billions just to get Mr. Page to like cookies, people familiar with the matter say.

Google and DoubleClick executives huddled to decide how to blend the two companies' products. They had a lot of ground to make up.

According to a resulting presentation slide, dated July 2008—the one headlined "Get in the Game"—Google offered fewer ways to measure an ad's effectiveness than Atlas, a rival owned by Microsoft. And Google had none of the behavioral-targeting capacities of AOL's Tacoda unit—meaning it couldn't target ads to people based on websites they visited.

Google executives finally agreed it was cookie time. As a result, every page where Google sold a display ad began installing a DoubleClick cookie on users' computers.

For the first time, Google had the ability to deliver ads targeted to individual people's computers. But just because it had the ability, Google didn't start using it. There was still too much internal resistance.

Mr. Weinberg, the author of the 2008 "vision statement," came to Google from DoubleClick. He and a small group of product managers and marketing officials began discussing the ways Google could target ads to people more aggressively.

His memo, stamped "INTERNAL CONFIDENTIAL," acknowledged the delicateness of the subject. Audience targeting is "of a sensitive nature," it stated in the very first sentence, due to the possibility of "mis-understanding" among users.

The memo then went on to outline a sweeping vision in which Google could get other websites from around the Internet to share their data with it for the purpose of targeting ads.

The document also says Google could start selling ads across the Web based on the things it knew about people from their Gmail accounts, and also from their use of Google's Checkout service, a PayPal rival.

All of that would be a significant change. Currently, although Google places contextual ads within a user's Gmail account, it doesn't follow that person to other websites with those ads.

The document shows awareness of the privacy implications. Nothing would happen "without strong consideration of privacy, legal and industry best practices in mind," it states. A goal should be to limit users' feeling of "creepiness" from seeing finely targeted ads, it says.

By late 2008, Google executives were preparing to launch ads targeted at users' interests. But the specifics still remained controversial.

Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. "It was awkward," this person said. "It was like watching your parents fight."

Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

Google launched the new advertising product, "interest-based ads" in March 2009. The service, currently available only to a limited group of advertisers, uses cookies to track any time a user visits one of the more than one million sites where Google sells display ads.

To offset the founders' concerns about cookies' secretiveness, Google set up a page, www.google.com/ads/preferences, where people can opt out and see what Google has inferred about their interests.

Google adopted other vision-statement ideas. Last September, it launched its new ad exchange, which lets advertisers target individual people—consumers in the market for shoes, for instance—and buy access to them in real time as they surf the Web. Google takes a cut of each ad sale.

In short, Google is trying to establish itself as the clearinghouse for as many ad transactions as possible, even when those deals don't actually involve consumer data that Google provides or sees.

The further step in that progression would be for Google to become a clearinghouse for everyone's data, too. That idea, also laid out in the vision statement, is still being considered, people familiar with the talks say. That would put Google—already one of the biggest repositories of consumer data anywhere—at the center of the trade in other people's data as well.

Excerpts: Google's Confidential 'Vision Statement'

Graphic: Google's Widening Reach

Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter

Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets

On Web's Frontier, Anonymity in Name Only

Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter

Full Coverage: WSJ.com/WTK

Corrections & Amplifications

Google Inc. is "moving very fast" to explore new uses for its database of users' online searches, Google founder Larry Page said to reporters last month. An earlier version of this article failed to make clear that Mr. Page was referring specifically to using search logs for such purposes as identifying public-health trends, rather than using its broad data for advertising.

Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com

Talk:Google DoubleClick Overview

2019-04-16T02:21:34Z

Yuhong:

Yes, I am the author. I need help with some parts of the essay. For example, it is easy to find when they bought Urchin. It is hard to find when they merged the data with other ad tracking data. Maybe we can do research. - [[User:Yuhong|Yuhong]] ([[User talk:Yuhong|talk]]) 02:14, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Google DoubleClick Overview

2019-04-16T02:15:26Z

Yuhong:

Yes, I am the author. I need help with some parts of the essay. For example, it is easy to find when they bought Urchin. It is hard to find when they merged the data with other ad tracking data. - [[User:Yuhong|Yuhong]] ([[User talk:Yuhong|talk]]) 02:14, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Google DoubleClick Overview

2019-04-16T02:14:36Z

Yuhong: Created page with "I need help with some parts of the essay. For example, it is easy to find when they bought Urchin. It is hard to find when they merged the data with other ad tracking data. -..."

I need help with some parts of the essay. For example, it is easy to find when they bought Urchin. It is hard to find when they merged the data with other ad tracking data. - [[User:Yuhong|Yuhong]] ([[User talk:Yuhong|talk]]) 02:14, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Main Page

2019-04-16T02:12:32Z

Yuhong: /* Documentation, Research and other resources exposing Google */

<strong>Welcome to FUCK OFF GOOGLE Wiki!</strong> Organise with us - '''check the [[MobilizeActions|next events]]!'''

<gallery mode="packed-hover">
File:Lotsoffingers.jpg
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</gallery>

Here is a space to collect and aggregate data, campaigning material, and everything that can help kicking the "Google campus" out of Kreuzberg, and Google out of our lives! Check a [[UrbanArtGallery|gallery of urban art and other interventions in the streets]]!

Be very welcome to help organize fact-based data on this company and their behavior worldwide! Read the [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=submit#Help_Us_Improve_The_Wiki getting started guide].

Feel free to [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:Upload upload files] and '''check the [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles uploaded files]'''

== Mobilization ideas, campaigns, events and actions ==

[[MobilizeActions|Next events and actions]]

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[[CampaignImages|Images and Flyers]] to print, spread and remix.

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Check our [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles media gallery] as well.

== Documentation, Research and other resources exposing Google ==

=== Google and mass surveillance ===
[[GoogleAndMassSurveillance|Google and mass surveillance]]

=== Google and gentrification===
[[GoogleAndGentrification|Google and gentrification]]

=== Google, taxes and the law ===
[[GoogleTaxesAndLaw|Google, taxes and the law]]

=== Google's limitless expansion===
[[GoogleExpansion|Google's limitless expansion in power and spectrum of activity]]

=== Google and Transhumanism===
[[GoogleAndTranshumanism|Google and Transhumanism]]

=== Google's apparent good sides ===
[[GoogleAndCounterculture|Google and Counterculture]]

=== "Smart Cities" ===
[[SmartCities|"Smart Cities"]]

=== Google "Campuses" In Other Cities ===
[[Google_Campus_In_Other_Cities|Google Campus In Other Cities]]

=== Google and Discrimination ===
[[Google_and_discrimination|On Google pretending to actively promote diversity, but doing the opposite in practice...]]

=== Überized/Exploited Tech-Workers Conditions ===
[[Uberized_Workers_conditions|Work conditions of the (self-)"employees" of tech-companies (Uber, Deliveroo, Foodora, etc.)]]

=== Tech-gentrification ===
[[Tech-gentrification|Influence of tech companies on gentrification]]

=== Google's participation in the US drone program ===
[[maven-drone|(project "Maven")]]

=== Various topics ===

Use this [[VariousTopics|page]] for research subjects that are not *directly* related to Google and/or their plan for a "Google campus" in Kreuzberg.

=== Google DoubleClick Overview ===
[[Google DoubleClick Overview]]

== Replacements/Alternatives to Google services ==
[[GoogleAlternatives]]

[[BlackBlockGoogle]] from your computers

[[BlockCallsOnWifi]]

== Bibliography ==

[[Books|Books related to Google]]

== Related Initiatives, Groups and Movements ==

* [https://www.blocksidewalk.ca/ #blocksidewalk] Toronto Citizens Initiative against Sidewalk Labs
* [https://capulcu.blackblogs.org/ Capulcu]
* [https://twitter.com/counter_campus/ Counter Campus]
* Google Campus Verhindern

* [https://googletransparencyproject.org/news Google Transparency Project]
* [https://degooglisons-internet.org/ Framasoft and De-google-ify movement]
* [https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/ Tactical Tech - Our Data Ourselves]
* [[NoG00gleRennes|No g00gle in Rennes]], France
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20190212183456/http://fffff.at/ F.A.T. Lab] announced a series of FUCK GOOGLE works in 2010, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20180812044558/http://fffff.at/fat-lost-prism-won/ Prism Won] in 2015

* [https://fg1er.noblogs.org/thsf-toulouse-mai-2018/ Google 1er Band] France
* [http://siliconvalleyrising.org/ Silicon Valley Rising] and their [http://siliconvalleyrising.org/news/ huge list].
* [https://wtf.ninja/ Digital Operational Security Wiki]
* [https://www.googlewilleatitself.com Google Will Eat Itself - GWEI]
* [https://www.google-ist-kein-guter-nachbar.de Google ist kein guter Nachbar] (DE/EN)

== Social Media and Press ==

* [https://mastodon.social/@FuckOffGoogle Fuck Off Google Mastodon.Social Account]
* [https://twitter.com/counter_campus T.O.P. B3rlin Twitter Account]
* Follow the [http://googlecampusverhindern.blogsport.de/presse/ Press Review by "Google Campus Verhindern" site]

== Help Us Improve The Wiki ==

Everyone can participate by contributing research material about any of our topics.

The work that happens here on the wiki can be used to support the organising effort.

To get started [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount&returnto=Main+Page create an account] (or use [[User:cypherpunks|this shared account]]) and log in. Then click [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing_pages "edit"] on any page, [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Starting_a_new_page starting new pages], [https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=Special:Upload upload files], [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents etc.]

If you're new to MediaWiki, check out the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:FAQ MediaWiki FAQ].

== Join Our Chat-Room ==

You can ask any question or suggest anything by [https://organize.fuckoffgoogle.de/#/room/#FuckOffGoogle:fuckoffgoogle.de joining our friendly chat-room]. The room is public and un-encrypted, but you can create encrypted chats once there! The room is a self-hosted instance on the decentralised [https://matrix.org/blog/home/ Matrix] network. There are clients available on [https://riot.im/desktop.html GNU/Linux desktop] and [https://f-droid.org/packages/im.vector.alpha/ F-Droid store] for mobile.

Please note, the room is currently an experiment as we decide how best to communicate with each other on the internet.

Google DoubleClick Overview

2019-04-16T02:11:19Z

Yuhong: Created page with "There are many problems with web advertising in general, including annoying features like autoplay video ads and pop-ups and also problems like “click fraud” which matter..."

There are many problems with web advertising in general, including annoying features like autoplay video ads and pop-ups and also problems like “click fraud” which matter to advertisers. This essay will however be focusing on the privacy issues with some of the kinds of ads that Google produces and the history behind them, and why Larry/Sergey didn’t consider them when buying DoubleClick for example. Also discussed is Mozilla and how they are involved (like in the Google/Mozilla search deal), including Brendan Eich who created JavaScript that eventually left Mozilla to found Brave. There is also the difficulty of solving these issues, which will also be discussed. Of course, advertising is not limited to the web and there are often many benefits and risks (like deceptive advertising) to advertising in general, most of which will not be discussed here.

The history of Google and its advertising will be discussed first. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while at Stanford, and took VC funding from KP and other partners. Google was founded with the search engine (with the PageRank algorithm) as the first product, but later added products like Gmail. Eric Schmidt was bought in as CEO in 2001 and recently left but are still on the board. Google IPOed in 2004, using dual class stock for example.

The first kind of ads that Google did was AdWords, dating back to 2000. AdWords was based on search keywords, and the text ads were displayed at the top of the search results (labelled as ads) and were relatively simple. Typically the highest bidder was shown, and the advertiser paid Google when the user clicked on the ads. AdWords involved relatively little tracking at least initially and will not be mentioned much here. At this time Google was also taking a stand against popup ads.

AdSense was ads shown on webpages themselves, based on JavaScript. It was invented in 2003. AdSense at least initially was based on keywords on webpages themselves (which Google fetched from its cache for example), which advertisers could bid on. Like with AdWords, Google and websites gets paid when users click on the ads. It also involved little tracking at least initially.

Google bought DoubleClick in 2008. DoubleClick was invented in 1995. It made more sophisticated ad tracking via cookies and the like famous (which was often called “retargeting”), and the problems will be described here. DoubleClick themselves called its product “Dynamic Advertising Reporting and Targeting” at one point for example. Initially DoubleClick was mostly banner ads, and many users developed so-called banner-blindness from these ads. Cookies were itself invented in Netscape in 1994, and the IETF group that developed RFC 2109 and 2965 already know that tracking with “third-party cookies” were a problem (and it was mentioned in these RFCs). Those attempts at IETF cookie standards ultimately failed partly because they were incompatible with current browsers, and led to RFC 6265 that is closer to how cookies are implemented in browsers today. It also led to W3C P3P which was famously implemented in IE6, which also of course failed (partly because it was too complex) and was removed from Windows 10 but was an attempt to get the tracking under control.

Google bought Urchin in 2005, turning it into Google Analytics. Urchin was founded in 1998. Initially its product was to analyze web server log files, with JavaScript tags being added in Urchin 4 (called “Urchin Traffic Monitor”). The hosted version based entirely on JavaScript that was created later was initially called “Urchin on Demand” and was introduced in 2004. Of course, the original software that was sold receive little attention once Google bought it and it became Google Analytics and it was discontinued in 2012.

One problem with the ads is tracking. The current economy is a debt-based economy based on consumption. The more money advertisers can extract from consumers, the more they are willing to spend on ads. This results in tracking getting creepier and creepier, and encourage consolidation of data for example. Most of the ad tracking is called “retargeting” and it is often based on cookies and JavaScript, and DoubleClick was one of the first to do it. All ads encourages consumption by definition, but tracking ads are particularly bad for these reasons.

For example, DoubleClick has cross-device retargeting introduced in 2015. Of course, it is limited to logged-in users tracking via the user account at least initially (which any websites can do), but it illustrated the trend. Google changed the privacy policy to allow Google accounts to be used for such logged-in user tracking in 2016. Recently Google signed an agreement with MasterCard to obtain credit card sales data. Of course, credit cards directly ties an increase in debt to consumer spending, which in turn can go to Google as ad dollars.

According to http://adage.com/article/digital/google-turns-behavioral-targeting-beef-display-ads/135152/, “In December 2008 Google added DoubleClick cookies to AdSense ads”, tying the DoubleClick cookie-based tracking (dating long before Google bought it) to AdSense. I assume that AdSense tracking probably did not exist before Google bought DoubleClick. Google Analytics added AdWords and AdSense support in 2009. In 2012, Google changed its privacy policy to allow data to be consolidated, which was also very controversial. In 2014, Google Analytics integrated with DoubleClick, allowing things like remarketing lists to be shared according to https://analytics.googleblog.com/2014/05/google-analytics-summit-2014-whats-next.html. Remarketing lists are basically lists of website visitors that can be uniquely identified by things like cookies, and it is one of the ways of targeting ads to users. It can probably be assumed that sharing remarketing lists basically ties the tracking together. Sharing of Google Analytics remarketing lists with AdWords was introduced in 2015, along with linking of Google Analytics and AdWords “manager” accounts, according to https://adwords.googleblog.com/2015/11/share-google-analytics-data-and.html. “Google Analytics 365” came in 2016, according to https://analytics.googleblog.com/2016/03/introducing-google-analytics-360-suite.html. Remarketing lists for search ads was introduced in 2012 and was tied to Google Analytics in 2015 (though not all data from Google Analytics can be used). It allowed different search ads to be targeted to different visitors based on cookie-based tracking on websites (with sites using special tags for this purpose). For example, you can show different search ads to visitors that visit the site every day.

Of course, users often has little control and benefit over storage of user data and ad retargeting by trackers too, especially when many parties are involved. This was mentioned during the Google/DoubleClick acquisition for example. Of course, some provides more control than others, such as AdChoices for example. AdChoices was an attempt at self-regulation for ad publishers, and used an icon to indicate that data was being collected. You can click the icon to display the privacy policy for the ads or opt-out of ad targeting. It was not the same as blocking ads completely though, and did not solve all of the problems of ads either. There was also an attempt at a Do-Not-Track HTTP header, which was probably too simple (and thus was also very vague in its meaning) and there was no guarantee that a site would comply either obviously since it was just an HTTP header (IE11 enabling it by default was also controversial and Windows 10 no longer does so by default).

Some of the problems with the opt-out methods are similar to the problems of a national “do not email” registry proposed in the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 for spam messages, and such lists to “opt out” of spam are widely considered to be unacceptable in general. Even “opt-out” or “unsubscribe” links in spam is widely considered untrustworthy for obvious reasons, though legitimate mailing lists will also have them. That idea came from the similar “do not call” registry for telephone marketing (to stop annoying marketing phone calls which were considered more annoying than spam of course), but email and internet advertising ended up being very different from telephone calls making these laws difficult to enforce. It is far easier to send an email than to call someone for example, and email is also more difficult to trace to the origin especially given that the Internet is global. FTC has a report at https://www.ftc.gov/reports/can-spam-act-2003-national-do-not-email-registy-federal-trade-commission-report-congress describing these problems (it was a report to Congress that was required by CAN-SPAM), including the possibility that such a list can be abused by spammers for example. “Closed-loop opt-in” using confirmation emails for mailing lists on the other hand is widely accepted, but it is not mentioned in CAN-SPAM. One example includes the tracking of “opt-out” using cookies in things like AdChoices, which themselves can be used for other purposes obviously.

There are some reasons why these problems were not apparent (for example to Larry/Sergey) when Google bought DoubleClick, or when remarketing lists was shared, or for that matter when Urchin became Google Analytics and the data was merged with ad data.

The difficulty of researching things like the tying of remarketing lists during the writing of this essay shows some of the problems. It seems that no one cared about the privacy implications when remarketing lists in AdSense and DoubleClick was shared for example. In many cases, advertisers managed “remarketing” lists of “anonymous” visitors that was being tracked by cookies from a central console without thinking of the privacy problems, treating visitors almost as numbers. This ties in with the idea of treating people as “consumers” to be extracted from that are also fundamentally flawed. Another example of this is AOL that famously made it difficult to cancel at one point, partly because measuring “customer loyalty” as numbers to be extracted from consumers was part of their culture. To make it worse, they once charged consumers by the time spent on AOL, so the longer they stay the more revenue they made.

The Google-DoubleClick acquisitions was also controversial, with EPIC, CDD and US PIRG for example filing complaints with the FTC in April 2007, a “first supplement” to the complaint in June 2007, and a “second supplement” in September 2007. There was also a Senate hearing on Sept 27, 2007 with testimonies from a variety of sources regarding that issue. One of the concerns back then was aggregation of tracking data and lack of control by users, though other issues unrelated to ads like storage of IP addresses by search engines were also mentioned. Ultimately it took the FTC until the end of 2007 to approve the deals, after a “second request”.

Before the Google-DoubleClick acquisition, DoubleClick was once planned to merge with Abacus. FTC blocked the merger because of the privacy problems and it never happened. Abacus Direct seems to be a market researching company targeting consumer buying behavior. As a result, Abacus had a lot of personal info about consumers, and there were concerns that this data could be merged with DoubleClick data and may be used to deanonymize them.

In 2012, Jonathan Mayer discovered that Google used some tricks in JavaScript to allow tracking in Safari. It involved how Google was able to bypass cookie blocking policy in Safari by using an invisible form to fool Safari into allowing cookies. FTC fined Google $22.5 million over this behaviour, and more recently there has been lawsuits about it in the UK. There has been also a class action lawsuit about this in the US. Google argued the tracking was unintentional at the time and that it was related to Google+ “Plus” buttons on DoubleClick ads (for logged-in users I believe). It is probably worth mentioning here that a lot of these kind of buttons (like Facebook’s Like buttons, to name another example) do their own tracking too (they generally worked by using IFRAMEs to the website involved), and this has been well known for years. For example, according to https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541351/facebooks-like-buttons-will-soon-track-your-web-browsing-to-target-ads/ Facebook started using the tracking Like buttons to target ads in 2015. I think the Facebook-WhatsApp acquisition story is also famous by now BTW, including how they eventually allowed data sharing between the two (presumably after years of losses). It is worth mentioning how even the WhatsApp founders now recommend deleting Facebook (especially after the Cambridge Analytica debacle).

Now, let’s discuss Mozilla. Brendan Eich was the creator of JavaScript at Netscape when it was invented in 1995 and was the CTO of Mozilla Corporation from 2005 to 2014. After he stepped down from Mozilla in 2014 (just after he became CEO and after bad publicity stemming from his political donations about things like gay marriage), he was one of the founders of Brave with its Basic Attention Token etc. Andreas Gal joined Mozilla in 2008 and was the CTO from 2014 until 2015 when he left Mozilla.

Mozilla signed the Google search deal in 2004, before Google even IPOed (let alone things like DoubleClick). Mozilla switched to a Yahoo search deal in late 2014 (by then the search engine was based on MS’s Bing I think), which was part of Marissa Mayer’s attempt to fix Yahoo before it was sold to Verizon. Recently Mozilla switched back to Google as the default search engine.

BrendanEich mentioned in https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/932747825833680897 that “It's not a simple Newtonian-physics (or fake economics based on same) problem.” This was about the history of the Google search deal with Mozilla and the fact that it was signed before Google IPOed (when it was being funded by VCs). It is worth mentioning here that Google was founded in 1998 when the now famous dot-com bubble was at the peak and VC funding was common (allowing many startups to grow fast which was considered more important than profits). Many other dot-com startups at the time had problems and ended up failing when the bubble collapsed around 2001. It is worth mentioning that the DoubleClick acquisition dates back to 2007 which was just before the housing bubble famously collapsed leading to another recession, and that bubble probably started just after the dot-com bubble.

BrendanEich mentioned in https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/932473969625595904 that “A friend said in 2003 that Sergey declared G would not acquire display ads & arb. Search vs. Display as that would be “evil”.”, before Google even IPOed (in 2004). Unfortunately no other source was given.

It was mentioned on Twitter that Firefox OS enabled tracking protection by default unlike desktop Firefox. It was mentioned in https://twitter.com/andreasgal/status/932757853504339968 that “Yup. I was able to sneak that past management”. I then asked “I wonder if you ever talked to Larry/Sergey.” and Brendan then answered that Andreas didn’t of course. I wonder what would have happened if they did.

https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/gdpr_risk_to_the_duopoly/ has some information on the effect of EU GDPR on Google ads. Notice that AdWords comply if all “personalization” features are removed for example. This included things like “remarketing”. I suspect that AdWords when it was first created in 2000 did not have these features. Other features like “remarketing lists for search ads” are also listed as not compliant, which was of course probably added later too. There was also the infamous cookie law that required notification for placing cookies, which was not that effective but a major step in the direction given that most ad tracking (including DoubleClick) were based on cookies. Google’s implementation of GDPR caused some concerns with publishers (http://adage.com/article/digital/tensions-flare-google-publishers-gdpr-looms/313592/), and some publishers blocked EU IP addresses in response to GDPR.

Data breaches are also a problem. The AOL search data breach from 2006 is pretty famous. The data was “anonymized” but the search terms was often enough to deanonymize users. Ad tracking data is likely similar, including browsing history and the like. Anonymizing data is a useful technique to avoid accidental abuse, but some kinds of data are hard to anonymize in a way that prevent all abuse. For example, various techniques for anonymizing IP addresses and MAC addresses has been developed, including hashing and truncation. Of course, the more data that is consolidated and collected, the higher the risk and impact of a breach.

Of course, it is worth noting that Google/DoubleClick isn’t the only one involved in the ad bubble (though DoubleClick was one of the first to do ad tracking I think). I think Taboola is often considered even worse than Google for example. The same fundamental problems with tracking however tends to apply to all of the ad networks. Some of the worse ones may use browser fingerpointing via things like JavaScript, which is even worse than the tracking via cookies that is most commonly used. Browser fingerpointing is generally difficult to prevent on the browser side, but it is so famous that the WHATWG HTML spec mentions it and marks the parts of the spec where there is a risk. For example the list of browser plugins (navigator.plugins in JavaScript) could be used at one point (in Firefox it used not to be sorted so it would be unique for each user, which made the fingerpointing even easier), but fortunately plug-ins are dying off anyway because of other problems. EFF created Panopticlick which illustrated some of the fingerpointing that was possible, and other examples that became famous included Evercookie by Samy Kamkar. To make things worse, many plugins like Flash had their own cookies as well (though browsers have been getting better at clearing them). It is also worth noting that the current tracking ads are not the only kind of web advertising. There are so-called “first-party” and “third-party” ads and cookies. Example of first-party ads includes Twitter and Reddit ads. Example of third-party ads includes DoubleClick and Taboola ads. First-party ads don’t have the issues described here.

Recently, Google’s ad blocking and “better ads” (including so-called Better Ad Alliance) involves annoying ads, but don’t fix the fundamental issues described here. Apple’s ad blocking targets retargeting by limiting the life of cookies for example (making them less effective for tracking), but does not change the display of ads or make ads less annoying (for example, autoplay video ads are pretty famous as well, especially with Flash).

Now, fixing the problems might be difficult. Obviously it would affect not only shareholders but pretty much everyone else if Google completely got rid of tracking ads. This includes sites depending on Google ads for revenue as well as Google itself. One example here is that both Microsoft and Novell used Client Access Licenses (CALs). CALs (called node licenses by Novell I think) are per user or per computer licenses common in server software like NetWare and Windows Server. Of course, when Novell moved to Linux, it was open source software that didn’t have CALs (Like with Red Hat, the company only paid for support) meaning that Novell could not expect the same level of revenue as in the NetWare days (they moved to Linux by buying SUSE). The story about Sun’s open source projects and Jonathan Schwartz (the former “ponytail” CEO), and how they eventually had to sell to Oracle is probably pretty famous as well (some examples of open source projects from that period included OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, and OpenJDK). The ad bubble will probably not last forever though. Bubbles like this one is part of the problem of the current debt-based economy (the main problem is that it allows almost infinite amounts of “debt” in US dollars since we got off the gold standard in 1971, including most commonly government debt), especially it encourage extracting as much money as possible from so-called “consumers” (another example is Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions and how Adobe’s stock price rose after it was implemented).

Google in 2015 hired Ruth Porat as CFO to bring financial discipline to Google. This included cutting unprofitable projects, especially “Google X” research projects and failed projects like Google Glass. According to https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-08/google-makes-so-much-money-it-never-had-to-worry-about-financial-discipline, one of the things they did was “to force the Other Bets to begin paying for the shared Google services they used”. It is probably reasonable to suspect that the increase in ad revenue due to DoubleClick etc is part of why they were able to start so many of these projects in the first place. One recent example is the recent changes in pricing of of Google Maps, mentioned in https://www.inderapotheke.de/blog/farewell-google-maps

For Mozilla, a good example to illustrate the problems with funding browser development is the Opera browser. It was founded in 1995 in Norway. First browser was released in 1996. It IPOed in 2004. The browser used its own engine and it had a lot of unique features, like relatively good CSS support early on (unlike Netscape 4 at the time which famously had relatively poor support and was a problem for web developers for years). At first it was officially a paid browser with a trial version (like Netscape was before 1998), but later they used ads (choices included banner ads or text-based Google ads) for non-paying customers. They eventually signed a search deal with Google which removed the ads and instead just used Google as the default search engine (like Mozilla’s). Of course, there wasn’t much profit margin in a web browser, and so they had to cut costs to keep stocks and quarterly earnings going up (so planning for the future was difficult for example). It was strong in the mobile world before WebKit became dominant there though (before things like iPhone and Android and when things like WML was common) and may still be strong in some embedded applications, with products like Opera Mini that was basically remote rendering of web pages (useful when devices had less processing power). Opera never had much market share (though it had plenty of fans back in the day), and in the end Opera had to switch to Chromium (with the Blink engine) instead of their own engine and codebase in the desktop browser (though they did release last updates for the old one that included for example TLS enhancements). Opera was eventually sold to a Chinese consortium, which eventually renamed the company Otello. The founders eventually started the Vivaldi browser, which is also based on Chromium/Blink but has many differences. In contrast, the Mozilla Foundation was created as a non-profit organization in around 2003 as the old Netscape was dying off with AOL’s help (AOL bought Netscape in 1998 BTW). It owns a for-profit Mozilla Corporation for tax reasons (non-profits are not subject to taxes that for-profits have in the US). I think the corporation owns the search deals like Yahoo and Google for example. You can still donate to the Mozilla Foundation today. Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released in 2004 after the Foundation was created (and after the branded Netscape 6/7 releases) and quickly took market share from the dominant IE6 that was stagnating the web (by being virtually unchanged for a long time without any real development) and was also well known for security problems like the Download.Ject attacks. MS was forced to respond with IE6 in Windows XP SP2 which in addition to security enhancements also added a few features like pop-up blocking and IE7 which finally bought real enhancements to the core engine that help web developers (especially in places like CSS). The old Netscape search deal with Google dates back to 1999 (obviously Netscape.com was Netscape’s home page at the time), and the success of the deal probably inspired the later Google search deal that Mozilla did.

One alternative to the current tracking ads is called Basic Attention Token. Basic Attention Token is based on the Ethereum cryptocurrency and blockchain (this is like Bitcoin but it is GPU minable for example using a different algorithm and it is one of the most popular GPU minable coins). It was created by the Brave browser, which supports it directly. It is intended to “directly measure” attention. “Attention” is measured on the client side (based on local browser history) and tokens are rewarded for them (called “basic attention metrics”), eliminating the privacy issues. This is often called a “zero-knowledge proof”. There are also other benefits like reducing so-called “click fraud” that hurts advertisers that is a common problem with current ads and removing the need for intermediaries that do tracking like DoubleClick and Taboola (so advertisers also gets more of the money too since they don’t have to pay them). Many other kinds of tokens and “smart contracts” has been created on Ethereum, and so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) has been the most common use of Ethereum (helping the price to rise). Of course, there is little to no regulation for them at the moment which results in many scam ICOs too (they tends to raise money very quickly, partly since it is so easy to give coins to them).

There are also systems for paying authors directly like Patreon, though it is also trivial to use PayPal or cryptocurrencies for this purpose (though also harder to donate). Patreon allow money to be “pledged” to specific authors. There are also many kinds of “paywalls” implemented on websites, many of which has their own problems like relying on cookies to track how many times people visited a site (to limit the number before the user have to pay of course) or making it difficult to post links on Slashdot, Reddit, and Hacker News that often dislike paywalls for obvious reasons (though some are better than others).

Of course, the problems described in the essay as well as other problems of ads (including annoyance and performance cost of ads) led to more use of ad blockers, which also have their own history. Banner ad blindness has also been known for years now, and Google’s ads tends to be simple text-based ads at least initially. One of the first type of blocking was popup blockers, and Google was taking a stand against popups in the early days (they were well known to be annoying). They became common in browsers by the mid-2000s (even IE6 in XP SP2 had them). At one point circa 2002, AOL/Netscape was disabling the popup blocker from Netscape-branded Mozilla releases (at one time there was the Mozilla source code/binaries and the official Netscape-branded builds based on the Mozilla source). Of course after user backlash they backed off from doing so. This was long before Google bought DoubleClick for example. Later more sophisticated ad and cookie blockers like AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin came out as add-ons to browsers like Firefox, and one is built into Brave of course (along with BAT as a replacement for the lost ad revenue). Many other browsers have also similar tracking protection including Firefox and IE, but they just disable them by default and may require that ad blocking lists (such as EasyList) be manually loaded. Of course, some sites has been attempting to detect ad blockers and ask users to turn them off (even Ars Technica did it at one point though it only lasted one day), which is also ineffective and not a good idea for obvious reasons (including the fact that it reflects badly on the sites that are doing it). Lawsuits against ad blockers was also tried in some countries, which was obviously mostly unsuccessful (like a lawsuit against AdBlock Plus in Germany by publishers there).

* Copied from http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-doubleclick-mozilla-overview_92.html