0:05

or call exam schachner is a technology reporter

0:08

and writes about things like online advertising

0:10

which means that he knows a lot about those

0:12

ads to follow you around online one

0:15

of the time you're on the sure you talked about how you you had

0:17

been followed around by an ad

0:19

for a rhinoceros t-shirts is that i'd

0:22

still stalking you

0:23

sadly no i i

0:26

kinda missed kinda t-shirt i do

0:28

get ads for some wacky

0:30

t shirts from time to time so i'm clearly

0:32

on somebody's list but a the ads

0:35

that are following me around the internet

0:37

right now have to do entirely

0:39

with puppies and dogs stuff

0:41

because i just got a puppy congratulations

0:44

what was your puppies name smoke most important

0:46

lessons his name is picasso the

0:49

damn good name is just one

0:51

wonders his early because our late because

0:57

the either follow you around the web or based

0:59

on a technology called third party cookies

1:02

advertisers , publishers love them

1:04

because it makes it easier to make money online

1:07

online privacy advocates and some regulators

1:09

do not like third party cousins

1:12

it's either an invasion of privacy and

1:14

so for the last few years google

1:16

has been trying to figure out a way to get rid

1:19

of third party cookies and replace

1:21

them with something new something that

1:23

will keep advertisers and privacy

1:25

advocates happier going

1:27

to require a kind of wholesale

1:29

reinvented away people make money

1:31

online

1:33

would you say that what google's been doing is

1:35

controversial this has been incredibly

1:38

controversial because in one

1:40

fell swoop google has managed

1:42

basically to frustrate most of its

1:44

main constituencies marketers

1:46

privacy advocates and regulators

1:52

welcome , the journal or show about

1:54

money business and power i'm

1:56

ryan canoe monday

1:58

january thirty first

2:04

coming up on the show google's plan

2:07

to change and targeted advertising on

2:09

the internet

2:18

this episode is brought to you by hp when

2:20

you're working apart from your team feeling

2:22

connected can be a challenge presenting

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hp presents a more thoughtful

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you can experience more genuine collaboration

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in the room from any room with

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hpe president

2:48

cookies have been part of the internet for a very

2:50

long time and the way they work

2:52

is pretty simple cookies

2:54

, little snippets

2:57

of computer code i mean it's usually

2:59

of random sequences of letters and numbers

3:01

that a website will store

3:04

on your device when you visited

3:07

visited letters and numbers are like a little breadcrumbs

3:10

eighty a cookie the remembers

3:12

where you been on the internet cookies

3:15

are good for simple stuff like allowing website

3:17

to remember what's in your shopping cart and

3:24

advertisers learned the diesel trackers

3:26

were really useful drop

3:31

, intel on

3:34

one side and then side

3:38

use it essentially to track which

3:40

with such people are visiting all across

3:42

the internet and that the internet

3:45

could that incredibly valuable suddenly

3:48

advertisers could see the things you're shopping

3:50

for online like say it's about

3:52

of carpet cleaner because you needed to pick up after

3:54

your new puppy an ad for

3:56

that carpet cleaner could now follow you from side

3:59

to side

4:00

like a billboard picking itself up and falling

4:02

you down the street in a word

4:05

they're , of creepy creepy

4:07

follow you around the internet and they

4:09

keep track of what you're reading so

4:12

for everyday people it goes

4:14

beyond just clicking cookie banners it's sort

4:16

of like wait somebody is watching

4:19

this and will advertisers and publishers

4:21

love

4:23

third party cookies are an invasion of privacy

4:28

now , privacy advocates that sir

4:30

you know a pretty essential assault

4:33

and what they think is a fundamental human rights

4:35

and for privacy regulators particularly

4:38

in the u those

4:40

kinds technique may

4:43

not pass muster with the blocks privacy

4:45

laws

4:46

they felt the technology was too invasive

4:48

and could fall into the wrong hands

4:50

so in recent years tech

4:52

companies pressure to stop

4:55

using cookies for this type of targeted advertising

4:58

regulators , europe in particular

5:00

take a pretty dim view on

5:03

the tracking of people across the inner

5:06

as a whole the third party cookie

5:09

is on it's way out other

5:11

browsers like

5:12

the and mozilla firefox have already

5:15

eliminated his third party cookies

5:17

but those browser share of the market

5:19

so it wasn't as big of a deal for many advertisers

5:23

but when google announced in early twenty early

5:25

twenty it's chrome browser also was third

5:28

party cookies advertisers

5:30

and publishers started to freak out

5:32

that some waves of

5:34

terror through the marketing business needs

5:37

of terrorists or the marketing business why do they care so much

5:40

about what google does well google's

5:42

chrome is used by

5:44

about two thirds of internet users

5:47

and so any decision it makes

5:49

essentially sets the market

5:52

marketers use third party cookies to

5:54

advertise and they advertise for they

5:56

most part on chrome and so

5:58

if google was going to remove that from chrome

6:00

they were gonna have to accelerate their

6:02

long term planning for have replace countries

6:05

sort of put a a due date on that

6:08

work assignment that , date

6:10

is now set for twenty twenty three

6:12

and google was trying to reassure the advertising industry

6:15

by saying that it isn't just going to kill

6:17

walk away it's going to try to invent

6:19

something new to replace them what

6:22

google says is that you

6:24

know it believes in the open internet that

6:26

it wants companies to be able to finance

6:29

themselves you know themselves wants websites

6:31

to continue to exist the dominant model

6:33

for financing the internet is

6:36

online advertising and given

6:38

its police in the marketplace if it just

6:40

removed support for third party cookies and had

6:42

no replacement that was going to cause

6:44

to cause of for advertisers

6:47

and for web sites and possibly lead to some

6:49

to shutdown getting , of third

6:51

party cookies will affect googles ability

6:53

to make money to put the

6:55

company is so much larger than it's online

6:57

advertising rivals and has access

6:59

to so data that

7:01

regulators

7:03

have already started investigating it in

7:05

, cases going even further

7:07

google recently reached google recently with the british

7:10

in several state attorneys general have sued

7:12

the company for its bad practices google

7:14

, of size in the marketplace knew

7:17

that it was probably going to face regulatory

7:19

questions if it just shut down

7:21

hey everyone else makes money without

7:23

helping them continue to make money but

7:26

google doesn't just have advertisers and regulators

7:28

to worry about

7:30

there's also privacy advocates who also

7:32

want google to come up with a better solution from

7:34

privacy point of view you know

7:37

there are other ways to attract people that can be pretty

7:39

invasive

7:39

third party cookies if google didn't create

7:42

a widely adopted more

7:44

processing protective alternative somebody

7:46

else is going to come in and recreate the third

7:49

party cookie on steroids with some other technology

7:52

and so you know even from a privacy point

7:54

of view you kinda don't want to leave to an

7:56

empty playing field and so that's why

7:58

google said they were going to create this

8:03

sandbox approach to coming up with replacements

8:07

google , we're going to have to come

8:09

up with a whole bunch of new technologies

8:11

to replace all the things that these third party cookies

8:13

do but in a way that's more protective

8:15

of users and user's privacy

8:18

privacy first and most advanced

8:20

a proposal that they made something called

8:23

flock or federated learning

8:25

of learning the

8:27

federated learning the cohort i'm

8:30

what was that how would that well yeah but then

8:33

the name of that i think with a little reverse

8:35

engineered i'm you know they they

8:37

initially had a bunch of bird names for

8:39

a lot of these technologies and so

8:42

i think federated learning of cohorts was

8:44

made to sound like a flock in part

8:46

because the way it works is

8:49

by creating flocks of

8:51

users or flocks of users

8:54

instead of tracking each individuals browsing

8:56

history flock would track of groups

8:58

of would similar browsing habits

9:01

give the whole group or flock a

9:03

tracking identifier how

9:06

, it

9:09

by the advertising industry my privacy experts

9:22

this episode is brought to you by legal zoom

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the first proposal for road replace

10:00

the party cookies cause

10:02

was attacked by regulators privacy

10:04

advocates and advertisers advertisers

10:08

you know they had one to one targeting

10:10

before right so this so this one

10:12

to one thousand targeting so it wasn't

10:14

going to be as effective google had some in-house

10:16

research saying that they found

10:19

that it would be ninety five per cent as

10:21

effective as third party cookies but the parameters

10:23

of how they figure that out were pretty hard to pin

10:25

down i was on a call with google trying to get

10:27

them to tell me with the numerator and denominator were

10:30

when calculating than ninety five percent and

10:32

i had a hard time getting a straight answer and

10:35

apparently advertisers i spoke with it as

10:37

well they were very skeptical that it would be nearly

10:39

as effective as cookies i'm you

10:41

know they saw this as a as a kowtow

10:43

to the and

10:46

that the the same value

10:48

so google drawing board

10:51

and last week the new

10:53

proposal when i was

10:55

called topics that

10:57

also an acronym for something like

11:00

know , think that maybe the whole

11:03

bird saying has really really

11:05

the coop say this

11:10

there there's still an active proposal called floods

11:12

are so i just saw the have the

11:15

abandoned a bird said he has a what

11:17

what is topics exactly so

11:19

topics is a replacement

11:22

for flock that is

11:25

basically it's a lot less specific

11:27

than even flock was it doesn't group

11:29

people into cohorts it just assign

11:32

them on number of interests it's

11:34

still your chrome browser analyzing

11:36

your past browsing but

11:38

instead as you know putting you into

11:40

one of tens of thousands of faceless

11:43

cohorts

11:45

the number of top level

11:47

interests

11:50

with topics google made a lot of changes

11:52

to appease privacy advocates you

11:54

know between the first iteration between flock

11:56

and today it seems that the

11:58

changes that google

12:00

they'd are almost entirely in

12:02

response to privacy complaints made

12:05

into that fewer web sites actually

12:07

get the data back using

12:09

, party cookies advertisers would be

12:11

able to see my actual browsing history for

12:14

googles new system top

12:16

the blue sky me five general categories

12:18

of things i might be interested in for

12:20

instance if it notice any reading articles about

12:22

my favorite the portland trailblazers

12:25

it might say that one of my interests as bad

12:28

i read about puppies and i can assign interest

12:30

category

12:32

and each week topics will change my assigned

12:34

interest categories and actually

12:37

in order to add some more privacy

12:39

america is actually puts the six

12:41

topic and for each week that is totally

12:43

random has nothing to

12:44

we're interested in sister just as

12:47

just a throw off at sent a little bit just

12:49

the throughout the sent a little bit and then on

12:51

top of that know in the systems

12:54

are we from a user point of view i go

12:56

into my settings and it shows maybe interests

12:58

that it's got from the and if i don't like them

13:00

i can just kind of cross them out nope nope

13:02

i don't want you transmitting was interest of mine

13:05

and the interest or curated so they

13:07

won't include sensitive thing they're

13:09

not going to include you know

13:11

stuff about sexuality or race

13:14

among interests and so it's not like

13:19

adding that information is it's just not an option

13:23

how , advertisers feel about this new plan

13:25

so far in there are some who

13:27

i think know that the third party cookie

13:30

is going away and so

13:32

they're they're looking for solutions

13:34

others i think we're a

13:36

lot more upset i mean we

13:39

heard from some who told us

13:41

you know that this is just grossly

13:44

insufficient for the needs of the vast

13:46

majority of modern marketers you

13:49

know the difference between the phrase

13:51

home appliances and the phrase

13:53

washers can be

13:56

the difference between an add

13:58

that is variable

14:00

for selling something and a

14:02

worthless piece of information the reason

14:05

for that is that you know if i'm

14:07

looking to buy not a dishwasher

14:10

but a toaster dishwasher ads or

14:13

the me but they both might fall

14:15

under the category home apply

14:17

and regulators who are also keeping

14:19

a close eye on what google does might

14:22

not be happy either this does

14:24

nothing to address the question

14:26

of is this whole thing just going to make

14:28

google stronger at the expense of its advertising

14:30

rivals and in fact if anything

14:33

it might even

14:36

by making it even worse for its

14:38

advertising rivals it

14:40

sounds like google is almost and

14:43

but because if they try

14:45

to appease advertisers they

14:47

upset pride if they try to appease

14:50

privacy advocates apps that advertisers

14:53

all regulators

14:56

staring over their shoulder

14:59

so , can google find its way out of the situation

15:01

google is stuck between a rock and

15:03

a hard place that is

15:05

between european privacy law

15:09

between anti trust laws and the us

15:12

around the world you know on one hand

15:14

if they don't figure out a

15:17

, to get rid of third party cookies is

15:20

those end up being ruled illegal or certain

15:22

uses of them uses of

15:24

is the find up

15:27

well revenue

15:29

so that's a lot of money what

15:33

, google said

15:36

in response to concerns

15:38

that privacy advocates continue

15:40

to raise and the advertisers

15:43

continue to raise google

15:45

in response to privacy advocates as said

15:47

you know we are working on this working this this

15:49

issue and and that's indeed why

15:51

they say they created

15:54

topics in the first place was to help address

15:56

these concerns when it comes to advertise

15:58

or concerns i mean google they get a bum

16:00

rap know they're not the ones who

16:03

who said third party took his moscow weighs

16:05

in on googles argument is don't get

16:07

mad at us we're just trying to help everyone

16:10

get over this coming

16:22

the

16:27

virginity monday january

16:29

thirty the journal the

16:32

production of gimlet in the walls

16:36

ag and at nicole