Unpacking Google’s Web Environment Integrity specification

    > 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.

>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.

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.

>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.

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.

Are you usually this unreasonably dismissive of people?

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