Google is trying to permanently get rid of cookies to track users

Google is trying to permanently get rid of cookies to track users

Google plans to phase out "cookies" associated with user tracking that allow the browser the ability to serve personalized ads. Google has announced test results that confirm an alternative to the long tracking practice, and that it can improve online privacy while still enabling advertisers to send relevant messages.

Google Product Manager Chetna Bindra emphasized during the announcement of the system called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) that "this approach effectively hides people in the crowd and uses on-device processing to keep a person's web history on the browser private." (The results indicate that when it comes to building interest-based audiences, FLoC can provide an effective alternative signal to third-party cookies), he continued.

Google is seeking to begin testing the FLoC approach with advertisers later this year using its Chrome browser. In this context, Bindra said: "Advertising is necessary to keep the web open to all, but the web's ecosystem is at risk if privacy practices do not keep pace with changing expectations."

Google also provides many incentives for change, and the US giant has been criticized for its user privacy, and it is well aware of the trends in legislation that protects people's data rights. The growing fear of tracking cookies has bolstered internet rights legislation such as the GDPR in Europe and made the internet giant devise a way to target ads effectively without knowing much about anyone.

Cookies:

Cookies are text files that are stored when a user visits a website, and some types of cookies are appropriate for logging in and browsing infrequently visited sites. When any person opens an online registration page only to automatically enter their name and address when required, cookies will appear. Some users see other types of cookies as defective.

"Third-party cookies are a privacy nightmare," Bennett Sivers, a technical expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told AFP. "You don't need to know what everyone did just to give them an ad," he continued. He also emphasized that context-based advertising can be effective, such as when someone searches for recipes on a cooking website that displays advertisements for cookware or grocery stores.

It is worth noting that browsers (Safari and Firefox) have effectively stopped using third-party cookies, but they are still used in the world's most popular browser (Chrome). Chrome captured 63% of the global browser market last year, according to StatCounter.

As Cyphers put it in the field: (It's a competitive and legal responsibility for Google to continue using third-party cookies, but they want their advertising business to continue to thrive). Meanwhile, Cyvers and others have concerns about Google's use of a secret formula to group Internet users into groups and give them (mass) badges of the sorts that will be used to target marketing messages without knowing who they are.

“There is the potential to exacerbate a lot of privacy issues,” Sivers said, noting that the new system could generate (mass) badges of people who might be targeted with little transparency. "There's a machine learning black box that will take every bit of everything you've done even in your browser and spit out a label saying you're that kind of person. And advertisers are going to decipher what those labels mean."

Sivers expects advertisers to eventually deduce which labels include certain ages, genders or races, and which people are subject to extreme political views. Marketers for the Open Web Business Alliance are campaigning against Google's collective move, questioning its effectiveness and arguing that it will force more advertisers to follow its policy.

"Google's proposals are bad for independent media owners, bad for independent advertising technology, and bad for marketers," Alliance Director James Roswell said in a statement.