Thread · 4 tweets · 29 Oct 2019

In fairness, DoH is the right thing to do here. DNS tracking is particularly vile and users are very much defenceless. Also the data goes to ISPs, who are hardly stalwart bastions of ethics and procompetitive conduct. Google already pushed them off the cliff with HTTPS Everywhere

The problem is that Google is picking and choosing what they do for privacy and limiting it to what won’t hurt them. Contrary to what @HalSinger purports, they won’t be curtailing third-party cookies. It’s just a move to make it look like they care, the feature is a joke.

It will also be very difficult to observe pricing changes. Google has full control over the auction system and can tweak the prices at will — it’s a complete black box. If they suspect people will be observing prices for anticompetitive behaviour, they can just tip the scales.

In fact, they switched to first-price auctions this year and no one can tell what effect it had on prices ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So I think DoH is the wrong tree to bark up at. Why they won’t do ITP and supply-chain transparency might be more revealing.