Google is About to Make a Major Change When it Comes to Tracking People

Tech giant Google announced this week that the company has plans to stop selling ads that rely on people’s individual web browsing histories.

The company also revealed that it will not be building any tools to track a person’s specific data across its products in the future.

The announcement follows Google’s commitment to removing support for third-party cookies in its browser Chrome. This move would destroy the main source of data tracking for advertisers and websites.

“People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising,” said David Temkin, director of product management for Google’s Ads Privacy and Trust team. “And advertisers don’t need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising,” he added.

Temkin says Google is planning to use privacy-preserving APIs, like the “Federated Learning of Cohorts API” (FloC), to deliver relevant ads. This would instead rely on groups of users with similar interests, rather than drilling down to your specific behavior.

“We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long term investment,” Temkin admitted.

The company plans to make FLoC-based cohorts available for testing in Chrome trials later this month, with its next update.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.