Google moves away from the ‘cookie’ diet to track users

Google is moving away from user tracking “cookies”, which allow the web giant to deliver personalized ads, but which have also increased the hostility of privacy advocates.

Last month, Google revealed test results showing an alternative to the long-standing tracking practice, saying it could improve online privacy and still allow advertisers to deliver relevant messages.

“This approach effectively hides individuals ‘in the crowd’ and uses on-device processing to keep a person’s web history private in the browser,” explained Google product manager Chetna Bindra, revealing the system called the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

“The results indicate that when it comes to generating interest-based audiences, FLoC can provide an effective replacement signal for third-party cookies.”

Google plans to start testing the FLoC approach with advertisers later this year with its Chrome browser.

“Advertising is essential to keep the web open for everyone, but the web ecosystem is at risk if privacy practices do not keep up with changing expectations,” added Bindra.

Google has many incentives for change. The Internet giant in the United States has been attacked by critics about user privacy and is aware of trends in legislation that protects people’s rights to data.

The growing fear of tracking cookies has led to support for Internet rights legislation, such as the GDPR in Europe, and has prompted the Internet giant to develop a way to target ads effectively without knowing much about anyone.

‘Privacy nightmare’

Some types of cookies – which are text files stored when a user visits a website – are convenient for logins and browsing frequently visited websites.

Anyone who opened an online registration page just to have their name and address entered automatically when needed, has cookies to thank. But other types of cookies are seen by some as harmful.

“Third-party cookies are a nightmare for privacy,” Bennet Cyphers, a technologist on the Electronic Frontier Foundation team, told AFP.

“You don’t have to know what everyone else has done just to show an ad.”

He concluded that context-based advertising can be effective; for example, someone who sees recipes on a cooking site and sees ads for kitchenware or grocery stores.

Safari and Firefox browsers have already eliminated third-party cookies, but they are still used in the world’s most popular browser – Chrome.

Chrome accounted for 63% of the global browser market last year, according to StatCounter.

“It is a legal and competitive responsibility for Google to continue using third-party cookies, but they want their advertising business to continue to work,” said Cyphers.

Cyphers and others worry about Google using a secret formula to group Internet users into groups and give them “cohort” badges that will be used to target marketing messages without knowing exactly who they are.

“There is a chance that this will only worsen many privacy issues,” said Cyphers, suggesting that the new system could create “cohort” badges of people that can be targeted with little transparency.

“There is a black machine learning box that will take every bit of everything you have done in your browser and spit out a label that says you are that kind of person,” said Cyphers.

“Advertisers are going to decode what these labels mean.”

He hoped that advertisers would end up deducting which labels include certain ages, genders or races and which people are prone to extreme political opinions.

A coalition of Marketers for an Open Web business is campaigning against Google’s initiative, questioning its effectiveness and arguing that it will force more advertisers into its “walled garden”.

“Google’s proposals are bad for independent media owners, bad for independent advertising technology and bad for marketers,” said coalition director James Rosewell in a statement.

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© 2021 AFP