I've worked in ad tech my entire career and many years competing against Google ad solutions. To my knowledge, Google strictly separates Chrome privacy efforts from Google Ads, and these work streams are part of the Consumer Markets Authority oversight. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/investigation-into-googles-priv...
I highlight these nuances for readers who are not closely tracking ads and privacy efforts. It is easy to make claims like "giving its own ads teams inside details" without proof, but in ad tech we know Chrome is working with multiple testing companies. Some of us happen to work in ads, but we also believe in greater consumer privacy and are eager for an improved ads paradigm.
I don't think you work for Google or are a sock, but it is clear from your comment history that you are extremely supportive of Google and a considerable proportion of your comments on HN writ large are just defending Google across multiple different threads/issues.
I was fairly pro Apple until they half attempted to provide ads solutions in the wake of App tracking transparency and I realized their gain was on App Store ads revenue. Amazon wishes they had a browser but their stores and hardware provide sufficient ads signals. Meta has plenty of ads scandals over the years. It’s a messy landscape but only a few organizations are developing ad tech and consumer privacy solutions in the open.
That being said, I personally think that the Chrome team might be choosing solutions that better suits other Google products instead of ease of implementation and security/privacy in mind.
I think more research would need to be conducted to see whether this change is actually anti-competitive or not.
