Google is charging ahead with its plan to replace cookies

Date:
Tue, 29 Mar 2022 14:47:24 +0000

Description:
Google's plan to replace third-party cookies has taken another step towards forward.

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Under pressure from the EU and privacy advocates, Google has been spending a lot of time considering how the digital advertising landscape will look once third-party cookies are gone.

The company initially created Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) , before announcing Google Topics as a replacement, which broadly splits the web into different topics and divides people into these groupings depending on their interests.

Now, Google is moving ahead with further testing of Google Topics and other Privacy Sandbox initiatives. As reported by The Register , the search giant has posted messages to developers outlining tests of the Topics and FLEDGE APIs in the Chrome beta set for March 31.

Whereas Topics splits up the web up into different buckets, FLEDGE aims to facilitate remarketing, or showing ads on websites based on prior browsing history.

Google offered a lengthy explanation on GitHub, arguing that the tools would offer "strong privacy guarantees, as well as time limits on group membership, transparency into how the advertiser interest groups are built and used, and granular or global controls over this type of ad targeting." Not everyone is happy

The latest cookie replacement from Google hasn't come without scrutiny, however.Google has been criticized by a number of different parties,
including browser maker Brave, over perceived deficiencies in its plans. READ MORE

Half of Americans accept all cookies despite the security risk

Brave is now trying to dethrone Microsoft Teams and Google Meet

Google's cookie replacement plan just passed a major hurdle

"The Topics API only touches the smallest, most minor privacy issues in FLoC, while leaving its core intact," said Brave in a blog post . "At issue is Googles insistence on sharing information about peoples interests and behaviors with advertisers, trackers, and others on the web that are hostile to privacy. These groups have no businessand no rightlearning such sensitive information about you."

It remains to be seen whether Google's latest cookie replacements will stick. But given the company's revenue streams are reliant on tracking people across the web, it faces a race against time to develop and deploy novel systems
that will allow it to do so without compromising on privacy. We've found the best privacy tools around



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/google-is-charging-ahead-with-its-plan-to-repla ce-cookies/


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