The Register: ‘Google “Colluded” With Facebook to Bypass Apple Privacy’

Thomas Claburn, reporting for The Register:

Several years ago, to deal with the competitive threat of header bidding — a way for multiple ad exchanges to get a fair shot at winning an automated auction for ad space — Google allegedly hatched a plan called “Jedi” to ensure that its ad exchange always won.

And in 2017, after Facebook announced plans to support header bidding, Google, it’s claimed, struck a deal with Facebook — dubbed “Jedi Blue” — in which the two internet behemoths would “work together to identify users using Apple products,” and set up “quotas for how often Facebook would win publishers’ auctions.” […]

“And as one Google employee explained internally, Google deliberately designed Jedi to avoid competition, and Jedi consequently harmed publishers. In Google’s words, the Jedi program ‘generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.’”

You don’t say.

★ Monday, 25 October 2021