rchmura

Here's a A summary of some of my previous comments on this: The bulk of information about you isn't associated with your account. (or in some personal way) Rather, it's stored in other silos associated with a non-account identifier (consider this a way to make it easy to serve more targeted ads to people who don't even have a google account). This non-account identified data can be enriched by account data (when there are co-occurrences of account activity along with non-account identifiers).

There are great efforts made to track everything we possibly can about people's behavior on the web. Algorithms connect all the dots and make information about you (found in Service A, Service B, ...) useful. So useful that we can determine enough about you to tailor your online experience in order to influence your decisions when it comes to purchases, brand recognition, political leaning, etc. This is done even when the influence we have over you may harm your best interests, for the purpose improving ROI for advertisers.

So the idea of "anonymous" data really isn't that, and the real issue is how that data is used against you. This is true both for an end user, as well as a company using google analytics on their site (losing customers, classifying their marketing sources for advertisers on doubleclick, etc.)

A couple concepts here: Associating data with your account: This is misleading, because the bulk of information about you isn't associated with your account. Rather, it's stored in other silos associated with a non-account identifier (consider this a way to make it easy to serve more targeted ads to people who don't even have a google account). This non-account identified data can be enriched by account data (when there are co-occurrences of account activity along with non-account identifiers).

The policy is vague and misleading because they should write: "We go to great efforts to track everything we possibly can about people's behavior on the web. We've configured algorithms to connect all the dots and make information about you (found in Service A, Service B, ...) useful. So useful that we can determine enough about you to tailor your online experience in order to influence your decisions when it comes to purchases, brand recognition, political leaning, etc." And follow it up with: "We do this even when the influence we have over you may harm your best interests, for the purpose improving ROI for advertisers" (Obviously this line is not conducive to the policy itself, but rather a blunt explanation of the effect of it which people are categorically unaware of)

The policies don't even explain that there is a difference between people seeing your data, and algorithms acting on your data. (Algorithms acting on your data are much more effective than when people do so. But that explanation in this case is lacking - it makes it seems like it's not all connected together, but in reality it is because of how databases work, and how disparate data sets can unique identify a person with enough data)

Answer to "How": (Copied from another comment of mine) a) The smaller company would have lower margins because they invest much more in superior materials, QA, R&D, etc. Where the larger company has an advantage because they invest more of their margin on ads

Regarding Adblock: b) I posted another comment elsewhere about how choosing which ads are "acceptable" or not presents challenges. There is a lack of objectivity. It should be a choice between ads or no ads.

chestnut-tree, earlier in this thread wrote up some great examples.

No unfounded criticism here; lots of research in this area. I'm not sure why you feel it sounded that way.

You are asking for a publicly available document showing the architecture of Google + Analytics + Doubleclick + Adwords... I can't get that, but other than doing experiments; you could do what I did when I first found out which is go ask someone who works on the internal API. (That's what I did)

That data is being sent on the original load of the Javascript file. Please refer to this section of the article: "To summarize: When google opt-out is enabled. Google still collects." (you will see a list of all the data including the original referrer)

The part that you are quoting is for a different product by Google. "googleadservices.com"

>"You are making false claims about a competitor without revealing that they are indeed a competitor nor that you have a long standing grudge against them."

I am not making false claims. Please hold the heavy handedness until we have reached an understanding.

I think there is a big difference here between distinguishing "is this an ad? y/n" vs "is this an allowed ad? y/n"

Useful and obtrusive are not mutually exclusive. Is it useful to have only large companies with large ad budgets peddle a slight iteration to their product line as "the next best thing", while smaller companies with a really great (superior) product don't get the exposure. The smaller company would have lower margins because they invest much more in superior materials, QA, R&D, etc. Where the larger company has an advantage because they invest more of their margin on ads. Note: I have an "MX Performance" and I would not recommend that line of mice no matter what the ads originally said.

From OPs article: > the google analytics blocker does not stop your browser talking to google-analytics.com. Period.

That excerpt explains that it's not actually stopping any data from being sent. Thus it's not actually opting out of sending data.

Thanks for researching my comment history and establishing me as an authority. Not sure why you are saying that my insight is a conflict of interest here. I'm not promoting any products.

It's not speculation. Are you asking for more of a deeper explanation of how the internal API works, or do you want to see published papers/links about it? Google doesn't publicly document the "Google Analytics Internal API".

Your report will have 0s for those users. Ideally your SaaS web app should use another tool for tracking analytics data instead. Google is a bad choice because you are basically tagging all your customers as "Dear marketers, please advertise to these people because they are interested in product X". Say hello to even more churn. (And not to mention more competitive ad-buyers when it comes to user acquisition)

Consumers concerns relating to Google analytics are valid, but the companies/sites hosting them are harmed significantly worse.

What are better ads? Are they ads that really connect with you? Do they change your behavior in some significant way? What makes ads better for the consumer? What makes ads better for the marketer? My answer is that what's good for the marketer is not good for the consumer. Google is optimizing for the marketer (getting better ROI). As long as consumers are told the ads are "unintrusive" they must be good too right? When marketers have a really strong ROI, they can get their ads out there and influence customer behavior. That type of influence is not good - and does not make it better for consumers.

Are you looking for examples of entire policies or do you mean misleading sentences? Are you not sure why I find them misleading (based on OPs example, et. al.), or do you disagree and find them to not be misleading?

Adblock is unfair because the "unintrusive ads" aren't that - they are just "companies who have paid more to have their ads shown - ads". I would say that's both unfair and terrible because a) it disavantages smaller players in the ad market (decrease in choice is bad). b) Who determines which ads are "unintrusive"? - that's a qualitative property. But then again it has become a product that does not do that - it's not actually blocking ads now.

OPs linked article reinforces his point. The opt-out doesn't work- because they are not opting out and data is still being sent. (nevermind how that flag is set and Google is learning more about you despite your traffic no showing in webmaster reports)