Google Chrome to emulate Apple's Safari ad-tracking privacy ethos
Future versions of Google Chrome will stop supporting ad-tracking cookies, and instead, the company will implement privacy features in the browser similar to Apple's iOS 14 plans.
Google Chrome
Google has reaffirmed its previous plan to remove ad-tracking cookies from Chrome by 2022, and said it will go further to create "a more privacy-first web." It follows Apple's blocking of cookies in Safari in 2020, and will follow the Cupertino company's iOS 14 privacy features.
"If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web," writes David Temkin, Google's Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, in a blog post.
Temkin says that despite Google previously announcing it would cease supporting ad cookies, "we continue to get questions."
"Today, we're making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products," he says.
Google does not, though, make it explicit when this will happen, nor specify precisely when Chrome will introduce these privacy features. Temkin also avoids mentioning Apple. Instead, he refers to "others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers."
Google has previously told developers that it will conform to Apple's App Tracking Transparency plan. Rather than relying on the previous Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), it will work with Apple's new privacy-focused ad-tracking frameworks.
Google Chrome
Google has reaffirmed its previous plan to remove ad-tracking cookies from Chrome by 2022, and said it will go further to create "a more privacy-first web." It follows Apple's blocking of cookies in Safari in 2020, and will follow the Cupertino company's iOS 14 privacy features.
"If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web," writes David Temkin, Google's Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, in a blog post.
Temkin says that despite Google previously announcing it would cease supporting ad cookies, "we continue to get questions."
"Today, we're making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products," he says.
Google does not, though, make it explicit when this will happen, nor specify precisely when Chrome will introduce these privacy features. Temkin also avoids mentioning Apple. Instead, he refers to "others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers."
Google has previously told developers that it will conform to Apple's App Tracking Transparency plan. Rather than relying on the previous Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), it will work with Apple's new privacy-focused ad-tracking frameworks.
Comments
The articles' link to the source blog post may not be obvious so you may not have read it.
https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-first-web/
IMO based on your past conduct you don't have a great track record of researching before commenting, but the blog post that explains Google's position is not a long one. If you take two minutes to read it you almost certainly will be more informed about it than you are now.
https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-first-web/
For others here with an actual interest in learning of some of the privacy-preserving engineering look into Federated Learning of Cohorts for a start. Google will be doing limited tests of it over the next few months to make sure there are no pointers that might be used that when combined with "other data" could allow third-parties to identify individuals
Hardly.
I think it's clear that when discussing Google, an advertising business, "selling user data" means selling access to users for targeted advertising via profiles (data). Google isn't handling over data to advertisers, they charge them for narrow-casting advertisements to these users. That's what selling user data means in this context. Users are the product.
This isn't even getting into the topic of shadow profiles, where data is actually collected w/o users approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
The article simply implies Google will go further, not stating as a fact that they will. Pretty sure that's what I said too. In fact it IS what I said.
Gatorguy, you know and I know, and everyone else knows, that Google will never stop trampling user privacy until they are forced to do so by law, and enforcement penalties large enough to seriously hurt. So, whatever they say about it, we can all be sure that it isn't the whole story. We can also be sure that they've left themselves an avenue to continue privacy violation, despite what their words appear to say. So, it's rather pointless to try to defend them when we know that, in the end, nothing substantive will really change and it will remain business as usual at Google.
This should be the topic of anti-trust scrutiny, but it won't be.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/03/google-temkin-ad-tracking
As for the article, no, it doesn't imply Google will go further to protect privacy than Apple, whatsoever. Especially considering the ambiguity of the statement and loopholes available to them -- while third-party identifiers may be devalued, Google doesn't need them, as a first-party they already control most of what they need -- the browser, the search engine, the email, the analytics.