JEjefftk·Jul 13, 2021
> Google's position is ... Everyone else's position is...
I don't think this categorization is accurate. For example, Apple built https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...
> if the data isn't required to operate, you don't need it
This is simple, but it's also wrong. Some counterexamples:
* Learning from implicit feedback: dictation software can operate without learning what corrections people make, or a search engine can operate without learning what links people click on, but the overall quality will be lower. Each individual piece of information isn't required, but the feedback loop allows building a substantially better product.
* Risk-based authentication: you have various ways to identify a user, some of which are more hassle for them than others. A login cookie is lowest friction, asking for a password add
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s more friction, email / SMS / OTP verification add even more. You don't want to ask all users to go through the highest-friction approach on every pageview, but you also don't want to let a fraudster who gets access to someone's cookiejar/leaked password/old device/etc impersonate the user. If you have a small amount of information about the current user's browsing environment, in a way that's hard for a fraudster to imitate, you can offer much lower friction for a given level of security.
* Incremental rollouts: when you make changes to software that operates in complex environments it can be very difficult to ensure that it operates correctly through testing alone. Incremental rollouts, with telemetry to verify that there are no regressions or that relevant bugs have been fixed, produces better software. You're writing as if your position is Firefox's but even they collect telemetry by default: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid
> the position of every non-Google-browser is that they want to give sites as close to no data at all as possible ... Every single browser developer that doesn't own an Ads and Analytics suite is opposed to Privacy Sandbox.
I cited Apple's conversion tracking API above, but another example of this general approach is Microsoft's https://github.com/WICG/privacy-preserving-ads/blob/main/Par... I don't know where you're getting that they're trying for "close to no data at all", as opposed to improving privacy and preventing cross-site tracking?
(Still speaking only for myself)