can somebody explain in simple terms what Brave is actually accusing Google of doing? The article seems to be written in a way that matches the language of the GDPR legistlation, instead of language actually meant to be read by people, and i can't figure out what the "workaround" actually is.
> Google claims to prevent the many companies ... from combining their profiles about those visitors
> Brave’s new evidence reveals that Google allowed not only one additional party, but many, to match with Google identifiers. The evidence further reveals that Google allowed multiple parties to match their identifiers for the data subject with each other.
BTW, many comments in here seem quick to agree w/this headline given how buried the details are. If someone has better detail, please share it.
Essentially, Google assigns an anonymized identifier to a user and sends that to prospective ad buyers. The idea is that the ad buyer can use this to target ads to people who have visited their site as they browse other areas of the internet participating in Google's auction. This is called remarketing.
An example. You go to footlocker.com and put a pair of sneakers in your shopping cart but decide not to buy. When you go read an article on the New York Times site, a potential advertiser recognizes your anonymized id and bids to serve you an ad for the sneakers.
The issue Brave is raising is that the same anonymized id is served to each potential ad buyer. This isn't an issue with data Google collects or exposes, but Brave states that buyers could theoretically collude to build profiles by sharing the data collected on their own sites with each other joining by Google's identifier. There is no evidence of this actually happening and Google's contract with ad buyers specifically prohibits this activity.
> essentially, Google assigns an anonymized identifier to a user and sends that to prospective ad buyers.
If it's anonymized then how could they send targeted ads to you? I think you're using a slightly different version of the word anonymous.
How I use the word anonymous it means, roughly speaking, that it can't be traced back to you. Or in this context, google wouldn't be selling anonymized data to third parties who in turn could contact you.
If they were selling data like X persons like product Y more then Z, there would be less of an uproar about this.
