Keep in mind that the AMP caching infrastructure will also be able to serve as a tracking platform because it records every single IP address. This effectively grants Google and associates a defacto monopoly in terms of an unblockable mobile tracking platform in a world where ad-blockers are becoming ubiquitous.
I think it's a smart move on their part actually, but what I assume will eventually happen is other providers will come along and provide a similar free infrastructure but without retaining logs and then everyone will migrate to that. Google will have gotten the ball rolling, and benefited for a number of years from the data, but ultimately people on the web prefer not to be tracked.
but ultimately people on the web prefer not to be tracked.
It's curious because most people on the web pay lip service to this preference but their actions typically indicate that they don't really care all that much. The folks on Hacker News are in the minority of users whose actions indicate they truly care.
Nah, I think they don't have the time to get up to speed enough to even understand what it means to have their IP tracked, let alone understand the lengths they would have to go to avoid being tracked.
Most of my non-technical friends are super concerned, and frequently tell me how scary it is not knowing what to do or how to avoid it.
It's an active role the current ad-based industry takes to convince their users that the tracking either doesn't matter or somehow empowers the user, which are both demonstrably false.
Or it is even worse, in that not being tracked is now a negative so some of us allow ourselves to be tracked enough so that we don't fall foul of not being tracked. Kinda like jobs that look at your social media presence before hiring and consider no such presence to now be a negative.
You nailed the problem with AMP: some people, like me, like to reduce the amount of tracking and general information gathering by corporations (and governments, but that is a different discussion). I stopped using Google Analytics (which is a great free product) because I wanted to reduce the tracking of people kind enough to visit my tech web sites and blog. If I were to use AMP, then my readers would get tracked.
This is the bigger story around AMP for me at least. I wonder if this would give them the ability to provide impression-level data in Universal Analytics for display ads not run through DCM if a given placement/site uses AMP. If they log the ad loading, and can parse the metadata from it, they can in theory use that to populate impression data and view-through conversions in UA.
Talk about a brilliant strategic move if this pans out since they'll be speeding up the web, gaining a massive dataset they didn't have access to before, and building a nice moat along with it.
Comments
Keep in mind that the AMP caching infrastructure will also be able to serve as a tracking platform because it records every single IP address. This effectively grants Google and associates a defacto monopoly in terms of an unblockable mobile tracking platform in a world where ad-blockers are becoming ubiquitous.
I think it's a smart move on their part actually, but what I assume will eventually happen is other providers will come along and provide a similar free infrastructure but without retaining logs and then everyone will migrate to that. Google will have gotten the ball rolling, and benefited for a number of years from the data, but ultimately people on the web prefer not to be tracked.
Nah, I think they don't have the time to get up to speed enough to even understand what it means to have their IP tracked, let alone understand the lengths they would have to go to avoid being tracked.
Most of my non-technical friends are super concerned, and frequently tell me how scary it is not knowing what to do or how to avoid it.
It's an active role the current ad-based industry takes to convince their users that the tracking either doesn't matter or somehow empowers the user, which are both demonstrably false.
Or it is even worse, in that not being tracked is now a negative so some of us allow ourselves to be tracked enough so that we don't fall foul of not being tracked. Kinda like jobs that look at your social media presence before hiring and consider no such presence to now be a negative.
You nailed the problem with AMP: some people, like me, like to reduce the amount of tracking and general information gathering by corporations (and governments, but that is a different discussion). I stopped using Google Analytics (which is a great free product) because I wanted to reduce the tracking of people kind enough to visit my tech web sites and blog. If I were to use AMP, then my readers would get tracked.
This is the bigger story around AMP for me at least. I wonder if this would give them the ability to provide impression-level data in Universal Analytics for display ads not run through DCM if a given placement/site uses AMP. If they log the ad loading, and can parse the metadata from it, they can in theory use that to populate impression data and view-through conversions in UA.
Talk about a brilliant strategic move if this pans out since they'll be speeding up the web, gaining a massive dataset they didn't have access to before, and building a nice moat along with it.
I am not familiar with details of technologies related to privacy management. Wondering would they be able to track even if someone uses a VPN ?
For certain definitions of track, yes. They'll be able to associate your IP address and related fingerprints to the cache hits.