Google will test the alternative to browser cookies with millions of test users in the coming weeks. Cookies should disappear from the second half of 2024. It will be replaced by a series of APIs that Google calls The Privacy Sandbox. We explain how it works.
Google Privacy Sandbox
Cookies in your browser track your surfing behavior and Google uses that information to show relevant advertisements in your search engine. The system is coming under increasing pressure from a privacy point of view, which is why the tech giant is working on new methods that can replace cookies. In the coming weeks, Google will be Privacy Sandbox Ideas testing with millions of users, it announced in a press release.
The Privacy Sandbox consists of a series of tools or APIs. The intention is still that they collect information about an internet user and that that information is used to sell personalized advertising to advertisers. The Topics API is the main one here and it should work in a more privacy-friendly way than traditional cookies. Each website on the web is labeled according to the topics we discuss.
For example, the online pharmacy you visit is labeled ‘Medical’, while your favorite football news site is labeled ‘Sport’. Google wants to offer advertising based on the topics that are most important to a user at a given moment, without advertisers also finding out which specific websites you visit. In addition, they only get to see, for example, that you are interested in sports, but not that you are completely crazy about the English Premier League competition.
Privacy-friendly alternatives?
The information that the Topics API collects is therefore also more superficial. Users can also choose which of the 350 topics are of interest. According to Google, the new APIs should ensure that the web can continue to look forward to a healthy future, without depending on cross-site tracking IDs or covert techniques such as fingerprinting.
Google says it has been working closely with regulators, marketers and developers in recent months to tailor its APIs to their needs. Still, it received feedback that there is more time to switch to the new system in the first place. Millions of users will be able to get started with the cookie alternative in the coming weeks, and more users will see advertising based on the new APIs throughout the rest of the year and into 2023. From the second half of 2024, cookies should gradually disappear from Chrome.
Solution for Dutch schools
We recently described on Androidworld how Dutch schools are increasingly aware of privacy for their IT infrastructure. We are now being advised to temporarily stop using Google Chrome, Chrom OS and the Google search engine until they will work in a more privacy-friendly way in 2023. Everything indicates that The Privacy Sandbox’s APIs should take care of that.
At the beginning of this year, it was also announced that Google wants to use The Privacy Sandbox for privacy-friendly advertising in Android. One of Google’s previous proposals to replace cookies has drawn criticism from privacy regulators worldwide as well as industry competitors. It is about the so-called FLoC system that you still recognize when you look at the functioning of Topics.
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– Thanks for information from Androidworld. Source