Image credit : NPR
Google is making progress in its effort to eliminate third-party site monitoring cookies. The business declared today that all Chrome users will have access to its Privacy Sandbox APIs starting in July. It also outlined the further actions web developers should take in order to begin testing and implementing the new system later this year.
Google’s VP of Product Management Anthony Chavez advises that developers start getting ready for the new system as soon as the July API is released. The firm will then permit developers to simulate the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome “for a configurable percentage of their users” beginning in Q4 2023, with a 1% switch to Privacy Sandbox occurring in Q1 2024. For the wider deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome, Google is still aiming for the second half of 2019.
“With this milestone, developers can utilize these APIs to conduct scaled, live-traffic testing, as they prepare to operate without third-party cookies,” said Chavez.
The goal of Privacy Sandbox is to balance user privacy and advertising revenue. Advertisers can use fingerprinting when platforms impose “a blunt approach” and ban third-party cookies. To profile users for targeted adverts, this system collects data such as IP addresses, browser fingerprints, and other specifics. When their previous sources of income are shut down, the advertising industry resorts to this extremely intrusive workaround. Ads are still the main source of revenue for websites and other online media outlets, despite how disliked they are. Without annoying internet advertisements, we would probably see even more paywalls and a sharp decline in the amount and caliber of independent journalism.
Also read : Efforts Are Being Made by a European Watchdog to Implement Stricter Regulation for Internet Browser Cookies
A list of a person’s interests is given to users through the Topics API, which is the foundation of the new system and is based on recent activity. Then it compares it to data from Google’s own records and a database compiled by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Without using the more intrusive tracking associated with cookies and fingerprinting, publishers can utilize the API to match users’ interests with pertinent adverts. Google guarantees that it will erase old topics and only save user interests for a period of three weeks. The business adds that all data and processing take place on-device and not on external servers (like Google’s). The strategy was designed “in consultation with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).”
