Daily Archives: January 28, 2022

There are a couple of improvements in Topics, says Hamed Haddadi, chief scientist at Brave, a privacy-focused browser and search engine. He says that under FLoC, people could have been grouped into more than 30,000 different categories, which would allow advertisers to gain specific knowledge of their interests. This information could then be combined with other data to build up an incredibly detailed picture of each and every one of us.

This is less likely in Topics, as there are around 350 interest categories that can be assigned to people. Although this number is likely to increaseGoogles technical description says its eventual goal will be to source these topics from a third party, and there could be a few thousand topics. Haddadi also says adding a sixth random topic into peoples interests makes the system a little more privacy-conscious.

Another potential difference between FLoC and Topics is that Google claims the latter will attempt to avoid assigning sensitive categories to peoplesuch as allowing individuals to be shown ads based on their race or gender. FLoC was criticized for potentially being able to generate or infer sensitive attributes through peoples behavior and interests. Google says people will be given more control over the interest areas that are assigned to them and can change settings, block topics, and opt out in Chrome. But, realistically, its unlikely many people will change Chromes settings in this way.

Whats more, the risk of websites working out someones sensitive personal traits isnt completely eradicated by Topics. It is still possible that websites calling the API may combine or correlate topics with other signals to infer sensitive information, outside of intended use, Googles description of Topics says. Over time it would be possible for a site to develop a list of topics that are relevant to that user, and this may reveal sensitive information. There are other privacy and security issues Google says it needs to fix. Google plans to test Topics in Chrome in the coming months, and the system could change based on feedback.

Then theres the competition issue. The smaller number of interests assigned to people could potentially hand yet more power to Google in an online advertising industry it already dominates. Paul Bannister, cofounder of the ad management firm CafeMedia, says that Topics seems to be a step forward for peoples privacy, but a potential step back for advertising firms. The 350 current interests included in Topics are broad, Bannister says, and this means its less likely to be useful for advertisers who are trying to target individuals with products that theyre more likely to buy. Those topics are fixed, so it's harder to find unique segments that are really interesting to your marketing campaign, he says.

As it stands, Topics seems to be only a solution for the Chrome browser. It is neither cross-browser nor cross-platform, says Phil Duffield, UK vice president at the Trade Desk, a tech and software company. The company built its own cookie-replacement rival that is based on identifiers linked to the email address people use to sign in to websites. As with any complex technical challenge, there is no silver bullet, but we do believe in the importance of future solutions being interoperable and easily used by all players across the industry, Duffield says.

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Google Has a New Plan to Kill Cookies. People Are Still Mad - WIRED

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian speaks at the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.

Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google's cloud division has formed a group to build business around blockchain applications, following efforts to grow in retail, health care and other industries.

Success could help Google further diversify away from advertising and become more prominent in the growing market for computing and storage services delivered from remote third-party data centers.

Blockchain advocates often talk about constructing decentralized applications that leave large intermediaries out of the equation. In particular, DeFi (short for "decentralized finance") is a rapidly growing sector of the crypto market that aims to cut out middlemen, such as banks, from traditional financial transactions, like securing a loan.

With DeFi, banks and lawyers are replaced by a programmable piece of code called a smart contract. This contract is written on a public blockchain, likeethereumorsolana, and it executes when certain conditions are met, negating the need for a central intermediary.

This idea of decentralized apps has become more popular among technologists who envision Web3, a decentralized version of the internet that breaks away from Web 2.0, which saw an explosion of user-generated content such as blogs and social networks. Some of those services eventually came to be owned by large internet players including Google, which bought Blogger and YouTube (which is now one of its strongest businesses).

Today Amazon, Google and other cloud-computing providers represent a type of centralization, by operating vast facilities that offer computing services to millions of customers.

That's not about to stop Google from trying to capitalize on an opportunity. The cloud group plans to hire a slew of people with blockchain expertise, said Richard Widmann, head of strategy for digital assets at Google's cloud unit.

"We think that if we do our jobs right, it will drive decentralization," he said.

Google's cloud marketplace already offers tools developers can tap to start building blockchain networks, and it has blockchain customers, including Dapper Labs, Hedera and Theta Labs, along with exchanges. Google also offers data sets that people can explore with the BigQuery service to view transaction history for bitcoin and other currencies.

Now, Google is considering what types of services it can offer directly to developers in the blockchain space, Widmann said.

There are "things we can do to reduce the frictions some customers have with respect to paying for centralized cloud utilizing cryptocurrencies," Widmann said. Foundations and other entities engaged in development in the world of digital assets are mainly capitalized with cryptocurrencies, he said.

Thomas Kurian, Google's cloud CEO, has identified retail, health care and three other industries as target areas. As customers in those sectors choose to adopt blockchain technologies, Google can help, Widmann said.

Other cloud providers have become crypto-curious, too, although none other than Google has announced the establishment of a blockchain business group.

Amazon Web Services, which led the cloud infrastructure market in 2020 with 40.8% share, according to technology industry researcher Gartner, announced a managed blockchain service in 2018. The website for the AWS service identifies Accenture, AT&T and Nestle as customers.

Microsoft, which Gartner said had 19.7% share in 2020, introduced a fully managed Azure Blockchain Service in 2019 but retired it in September, citing "lowered interest" in a blog post.

Smaller cloud providers are also aware of the opportunity.

"We have a lot of blockchain and crypto customers on the platform," said Gabe Monroy, chief product officer at DigitalOcean, which focuses on small and midsize businesses. "It was one of our biggest cohort growth segments over 2021. We're definitely paying close attention to the space."

Cryptocurrency companies are also starting to cater to software developers. Cryptocurrency exchange operator Coinbase has announced a slew of services under the banner Coinbase Cloud, and it describes the tools as being capable of running on multiple clouds.

"This is kind of like ourAWSfor crypto," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said at the JPMorgan Crypto Economy Forum in November. "We're trying to externalize some of the services that we've had to build. A lot of hard engineering has gone into how do we store crypto and integrate all the blockchains and monitor transactions for AML purposes and do trading and staking and all that."

Meanwhile, the founders of San Francisco start-up Alchemy told CNBC that they hope to be compared with AWS in the blockchain realm. Alchemy announced in October that it had raised venture capital at a $3.5 billion valuation.

Google has been making itself more comfortable in the blockchain universe lately.

Company veteran Shivakumar Venkataraman has taken charge of a new blockchain group, Bloomberg reported last week. That organization is separate from the cloud team oriented around digital assets, a spokesperson said.

"We're going to look to the left and right of ourselves to extent there's opportunities to work with them," Widmann said of other Google initiatives.

In a recent letter, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki wrote that the video service has been inspired by Web3.

"The past year in the world of crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and even decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) has highlighted a previously unimaginable opportunity to grow the connection between creators and their fans," she wrote.

About 82% of Google parent Alphabet's revenue came from advertising in the third quarter. Alphabet reported a $644 million operating loss on $4.99 billion in cloud revenue, which was up almost 45%. Gartner estimated that Google held 6.1% market share in 2020.

CNBC's Mackenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.

WATCH: Google and C3 AI team up to grow AI in the cloud

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Google Cloud is hiring a legion of blockchain experts to expand its business - CNBC

Google Play is introducing a new Offers tab to help users discover deals on games and apps, Google announced on Thursday. The company says the tab will surface deals across travel, shopping, media, fitness and entertainment apps. The new tab is rolling out over the coming weeks to users in the United States, India and Indonesia. Google plans to launch the new tab in more countries later this year.

The tab includes an offers for apps you might like section to help users discover deals that are relevant to them. Google notes that there are several types of deals that users will be able to discover. The tab will surface sales on games and in-game items, such as limited-time deals on magic orbs and tokens. It will also display rewards and bundled offers where apps are offering things like free delivery, free rides and more rewards. Other types of offers that will be featured include sales on movies and books that are available to rent or buy. Lastly, Google outlined that the tab will encourage users to try something new by displaying apps that are offering 30 days free and other extended trials at no cost.

Since 2012, Google Play has been a one-stop shop for discovering and enjoying your favorite apps, games and digital content. This week were launching Offers a new tab in the Google Play Store app, wrote David Winer, a product manager at Google Play, in a blog post about the announcement.

The offers tab is located in the navigation bar at the bottom of the Google Play app, which makes it an easy place to quickly check for deals when youre searching through the marketplace. Google says its partnering with developers of top apps and games and plans to add new deals to the tab regularly.

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Google Play is getting an Offers tab to display deals on games and apps - TechCrunch

The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

Jan 25 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) is slated to hire 200 engineers in Brazil this year, as it seeks to bolster its privacy, security, and anti-abusive content technologies, Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, its director of engineering for Latin America, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The 2023 hiring push would double the current number of engineers working in Latin America's largest country with a focus on "local talents" that could create products not only for Brazil, but for the world.

The job offers will be focused on the southeastern states of Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo, the country's tech hubs, but with the possibility of remote work.

Answering questions from Reuters via e-mail, Ribeiro-Neto also highlighted that the planned hires are part of a global expansion plan prioritizing Google's main markets outside the United States.

"With such a relevant market, we believe it is important to have more and more Brazilians at the forefront of the development of our technologies," he said, adding that Brazil is among the top five countries for the use of products such as Android, Chrome, YouTube and Maps.

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Reporting by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Sandra Maler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Google expands in Brazil seeking to improve areas of privacy and security - Reuters

In November 2021, the UKs Supreme Court handed down a widely anticipated judgment in Lloyd v Google.[1] In its unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court dismissed Mr Lloyds claim, refusing to allow it to proceed by way of a representative action (i.e., opt-out class action) under English procedural law. The claim had been brought on behalf of over four million iPhone users for alleged breaches of data protection legislation by Google. Because the claim never progressed beyond this preliminary stage, which was focused solely on whether the procedural mechanism of the claim was viable, the decision did not consider the merits of the underlying claim.

The Lloyd judgment significantly limits the ability of groups of individuals to pursue data controllers and processors for breaches of data protection laws in England and Wales. Whilst this decision may be an unwelcome development for individual data subjects (and the litigation funders who have invested significant amounts of time and money in backing these types of claims), it may be welcomed by corporations who handle large amounts of personal data.

The Supreme Courts decision turned on the fact that Mr Lloyd had sought compensation of a uniform amount for each affected individual (750), which was held to be the incorrect approach in the circumstances and thus incompatible with the English civil procedure that governs the representative claimant regime (namely Rule 19 of the Civil Procedural Rules (CPR 19)). The representative party mechanism under CPR 19 requires the representative to have the same interest as the other persons that they represent. Whilst the mechanism is frequently used in other types of litigation, e.g., claims brought by groups of shareholders and creditors, or beneficiaries of a trust, it had never been used in a claim for mass redress under data protection legislation as Mr Lloyd had sought to do. The key question was therefore whether Mr Lloyd had the same interest as all four million affected iPhone users, with respect to the type and quantum of damage suffered.

The Supreme Court held that he did not. It favoured an individualised evidence approach which would involve a bespoke assessment of damages for each affected person based on several distinct factors. In this case, those factors included: (i) over what period of time Google tracked the users browsing activity; (ii) what quantity of data was processed (iii) whether any of that data was of a sensitive or private nature; (iv) what Google did with that information and (v) whether Google obtained a commercial benefit from such use. The degree to which damages might vary between individuals and the complicated, lengthy assessments that would need to be undertaken to ascertain each individuals compensation made Mr Lloyds claim entirely unsuitable for a representative action under CPR 19.

As to where this leaves prospective claimants seeking redress for data breaches, the path to justice is now much more uncertain, but the door has not been firmly closed on such cases. The Supreme Court did not say that data breach claims cannot be brought as representative actions, just that many are unlikely to be capable of proceeding through that mechanism. One route that the court suggested would involve a bifurcated approach, in which the claim first proceeds as a representative action in order to establish liability, which is then followed by separate actions by the individuals (or a single follow-up action brought by the group on an opt-in basis in which there is no representative and all individuals are parties to the action). However, this is acknowledged to be difficult to manage in practice (and highly unattractive to litigation funders).

It is possible that the CPR 19 representative action could work in certain types of claims where the damage is identical for each affected individual e.g., arising from a data breach due to a hack of a customer database in which exactly the same type of data for each customer is compromised (such as contact information and credit card details). Some parties and funders may look to pursue claims in jurisdictions outside the UK the Netherlands has an effective class action mechanism for judicial redress (i.e., WAMCA claims) and is already being used in relation to GDPR redress. It may also be open to individuals to pursue claims in the United States (if there is appropriate jurisdictional nexus, such as the data controller being based there). Although an English citizen (Mr Elliott) recently had his GDPR class action against PubMatic Inc. dismissed in California,[2] others may look to pursue similar claims in the United States now that the UK is not a viable option for such actions.

It is likely that one or more of these routes will be tested before the applicable courts over the coming year. Whilst there is no certainty that any action will succeed, it is certain that parties, lawyers and funders will be focusing their efforts on discovering ways in which such actions can be brought going forwards (if at all).

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[1] Lloyd v Google LLC [2021] UKSC 50[2] Elliott v. Pubmatic, Inc. (4:21-cv-01497), California Northern District Court

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Post-Lloyd v Google: Collective Redress in the UK for Breaches of Data Protection Legislation - JD Supra

Andrea Bonfiglio and other Triple T Hospitality Group owners that manage Tio Taco and Tequila Bar said they were completely unaware of the Google review quota policy put in place by a "rogue" manager at their Edison location (per Yahoo! News). Once they saw the post, they removed the policy, informed employees that they wouldn't be held to the quota, and fired the general manager and assistant manager at the location. Unfortunately, the damage was already done.

The posted policy requiring employees to get at least five 5-star Google reviews per month to maintain employment was not well received by the internet. The viral Reddit post that garnered 1,700 comments has now been removed, and the taco bar's Yelp page is being monitored after being tagged with an "unusual activity alert." Most followers who weighed in on the issue voiced their frustration with unrealistic expectations set by managers to gain reviews that were coaxed instead of earned. Despite Bonfiglio stating that the management group did not instate the policy and agree that it is "insane," very few comments mention the violent backlash experienced by the owner and her family.

Google reviews rate Tio Taco and Tequila Bar with 4.4 stars, and almost every review, whether it's positive or negative, seems to be answered by the owner. Google must have done a little housekeeping of its own, as there are no longer reviews mentioning the restaurant's defunct policy.

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How A Google Review Policy Led To Threats Against A Restaurant Chain Owner - Tasting Table

Google is working on a lower-end Chromecast with Google TV that would slot in below its current model in price and also video resolution. According to Protocols Janko Roettgers, the upcoming, cheaper Chromecast will run the same Google TV software as the existing hardware and will still include a remote control. But it will be limited to a maximum of 1080p video quality.

Playing to that limitation, Protocol believes Google might market the device as Chromecast HD with Google TV, similar to the branding of Apples Apple TV HD. The product would be marketed towards consumers with 1080p TVs who dont necessarily care about having the very best picture quality. Other specs mentioned in the report include a maximum of 2GB RAM and 60fps frame rate and confirmation that the hardware would be capable of decoding Googles preferred AV1 codec.

With the 2020 Chromecast with Google TV priced at $49.99, potential price points for the HD version could range anywhere from $19.99 to $39.99. The entry-level streaming hardware market is fiercely competitive, with multiple models to choose between from Amazon and Roku alone; clearly, Google wants in on that pool of potential customers.

The only thing that would give me pause about a lower-end Chromecast with Google TV would be performance. The current model can already get bogged down from time to time, so, hopefully, Google can deliver a device that sacrifices resolution without ruining the day-to-day experience of browsing streaming recommendations and apps.

This new Chromecast HD with Google TV would likely replace the aging, older-generation Chromecast that Google continues to sell for $29.99 despite it coming without any built-in entertainment apps or a remote. Like its predecessors, the standard Chromecast relies on users to stream content from another device like their smartphone or PC to the HDMI dongle. Google TV is a much simpler approach that offers a vast app store, voice search, Google Assistant integration, and more.

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Google could bring the fight to Roku and Amazon with an even cheaper Chromecast - The Verge