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Unpacking Google’s Web Environment Integrity specification

(vivaldi.com)
756 points dagurp | 10 comments | 26 Jul 23 11:30 UTC | HN request time: 1.871s | source | bottom
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wbobeirne ◴[26 Jul 23 17:56 UTC] No.36881997[source]▶

    > Can we just refuse to implement it?
    > Unfortunately, it’s not that simple this time. Any browser choosing not to implement this would not be trusted and any website choosing to use this API could therefore reject users from those browsers. Google also has ways to drive adoptions by websites themselves.
This is true of any contentious browser feature. Choosing not to implement it means your users will sometimes be presented with a worse UX if a website's developers decide to require that feature.

But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers. If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.

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nvy ◴[26 Jul 23 18:15 UTC] No.36882333[source]▶
>But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers.

Absolutely zero large web properties do anything based on what's best for users. If this gains traction, Google will simply deny adsense payments for impressions from an "untrusted" page, and thus all the large players that show ads for revenue will immediately implement WEI without giving a single flying shit about the users, as they always have and always will.

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1. pptr ◴[26 Jul 23 19:29 UTC] No.36883544[source]▶
Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown.

I don't know much about the online ad market. I assume advertisers will pay more for attested impressions than for unattested ones. But unattested impressions will still be worth something.

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2. nvy ◴[26 Jul 23 19:37 UTC] No.36883643[source]▶
>Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown.

It's very simple. Google has concerns of click/impression fraud. Unattested traffic would be more likely to be fraudulent. Not paying for unattested impressions/clicks is therefore an easy way to cut costs and combat fraud.

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3. colonelpopcorn ◴[26 Jul 23 19:42 UTC] No.36883732[source]▶
Because it makes payouts from advertisers more likely. If I'm advertising on Google's platform I don't want to pay for a web-scraping robot to see my ad.
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4. judge2020 ◴[26 Jul 23 19:42 UTC] No.36883740[source]▶
> I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown.

Chrome will happily block a Google ad if it uses too much resources, I experience this a lot with a few sites that do ad replacements in the background.

5. pyrale ◴[26 Jul 23 20:40 UTC] No.36884672[source]▶
Rather than not selling that space, google would later let ad buyers be aware of the parameter, and bid less for unattested views. Therefore, Google would reward sites less for such pages, and the sites would be incentivized to block you.
6. bagacrap ◴[27 Jul 23 00:21 UTC] No.36887087[source]▶
But the usual HN paranoid anti-Google retort is that Google happily charges advertisers for fake ad impressions.

Now if Google cares about real impressions it's still terrible no good very bad evil.

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7. Dylan16807 ◴[27 Jul 23 04:32 UTC] No.36888943{3}[source]▶
Are you usually this unreasonably dismissive of people?

It's good for google to care, it's not good for them to do this.

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8. nprateem ◴[27 Jul 23 07:12 UTC] No.36890034[source]▶
> Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic? I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown

Because this is an incredible way of exerting their total control over the web across all browsers. If they don't like a feature, they get to downgrade the user's attestation or fail it. If it costs them some unattested traffic in order to create a permanently unassailable market position, it's worth the money.

It'll block all other search engines by preventing web scraping except those blessed by Google. For this reason alone many websites will adopt it. This will impact competition, research and freedom.

After this, all user choice is gone, and it'll only be governments who can break the racket.

If the CCP don't already do this, I expect they'll quickly implement something similar.

9. bagacrap ◴[28 Jul 23 02:02 UTC] No.36902398{4}[source]▶
I don't even know who you think I'm dismissing. Mine is more of a generalized ennui directed at HN as a whole.

I don't think Google has actually done anything. The bar for experimenting with new code in Chromium is pretty low. This Chicken Little reaction to a non-starter is just a result of developing in the open.

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10. Dylan16807 ◴[28 Jul 23 02:21 UTC] No.36902511{5}[source]▶
Your post implies that anyone against this attestation is just going "Google terrible no good very bad evil", because Google "caring about real impressions" is what they said they wanted.

But you can "care" about something in good and bad ways, and the criticism is not "Google bad".