Source: The Edge Singapore
In a recent announcement, Alphabet Inc’s Google stated it set to delay the phase out process of the third party tracking cookies on its Chrome browser till the end of 2024. At first, the search giant had specified how it was in talks to block these online trackers in the year 2020. However, earlier in 2022, it stated how it is pausing development on the Federated Learning of Cohorts. Reportedly, these were the ones set to replace these cookies.
Various tech giant suchs as Amazon.co Inc, Brave and Vivaldi have expressed their opposition to FLoC. They stated it does not exactly halt such third party cookies from monitoring people’s activities. The Federated Learning of Cohorts was set to be a means of surveillance that initiate divisions of the users into unknown sets who showcased identical appeal, taking this data of the people to advertisers. Essentially, this would be with the absence of the users’ information owing to the formation of these groups.
Google’s response to the criticism put forward:
Subsequently, Google went on to announce the new concept of ‘Topics.’ Mainly, this would function by the listing of a maximum of five interests of the particular user as they wander through the internet every week, aspects such as shopping and travelling.
Through this, the required data would come up as rather abridged, and conveyed to the concerned advertisers without any important information on the user. Notably, this would only show the parties the factors that appeal and matter to the users. Their data in Google’s Topics would be kept in store locally, which would be subject to automatic deletions following a span of three weeks.
For the past two years, the company has conducted test of various methods for the replacement of these trackers on its browser. Currently, Google is expecting APIs for the Privacy Sandbox ambition to be launched at some point in 2023’s third quarter. Owing to this, the search giant specified its intentions to entirely phase out these cookies from Chrome hopefully after 2024’s second quarter.
Notable, the company was one of the first ones to suggest the removal of the third-party trackers from browsers such as Chrome. Apple Inc has already got rid of support for such trackers from its Safari browser, with Firefox following the course. With many more having taken similar steps of removal, it is to be kept in mind that Brave browser has never had support for these third-party cookies.
