Google says it will stop selling ads based on people’s browsing histories

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BREAKING: Google says it will stop selling ads based on people’s browsing histories and tracking users across the internet – though the new policy doesn’t include mobile apps

  • Google announced the dramatic advertising changes on Wednesday 
  • It said it will stop using and investing in technologies that track users on its Chrome browsers as they move from site to site by next year
  • Google has been working on proposals to remove so-called third party cookies from its Chrome browser since early last year 
  • Third-party cookies, which have enabled online ads for decades, have been a longstanding source of privacy concerns
  • Google will still be able to track users itself through data collected from its services like Search, Maps and YouTube 
  • The company said its latest announcement applies only to websites, not ad tools or unique identifiers for mobile apps 

By Wires and Megan Sheets For Dailymail.com

Published: | Updated:

Google on Wednesday announced plans to stop selling ads based on users’ browsing history in an upcoming overhaul aimed at tightening up privacy.  

The tech giant’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, said that it is aiming to stop using and investing in technologies that track users on its Chrome browser as they move from site to site by next year.    

Google has been working on proposals to remove from Chrome so-called third party cookies – snippets of code used by a website’s advertisers to record browsing history in order to show users personalized ads – in an effort to meet growing data privacy standards.

Third-party cookies have been a longstanding source of privacy concerns, so Google proposes instead grouping together web users with similar interests and keeping web histories private on user devices.

Google will still be able to track users itself through data collected from its services like Search, Maps and YouTube. 

The company said its latest announcement applies only to websites, not ad tools or unique identifiers for mobile apps.  

Google on Wednesday announced plans to stop selling ads based on users’ browsing history in an upcoming overhaul aimed at tightening up privacy (file photo) 

In a blog post, David Temkin, Google’s director of product management for ads privacy and trust, said the company continues to get questions on whether it will join others in the ad tech industry that plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers.

‘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,’ Temkin wrote.

Google’s proposals have drawn criticism from players in the online ad industry as well as scrutiny from regulators over concerns that it will add to the tech giant’s already dominant power in online advertising.

Chrome is the world’s dominant web browser, and many rival browsers like Microsoft’s Edge are based on Google’s Chromium technology. 

Google accounted for 52 percent of global digital ad spending in 2020 with nearly $152billion, according to digital-ad consulting group Jounce Media. 

Critics contend Google is banning rivals from building gigantic profiles on users, while developing for itself features in Chrome to continue to add to such dossiers.

Temkin disputed that notion in his blog post, vowing that Google will not to develop workarounds for itself and saying that it is committed to continue allowing targeting ads based on data that companies receive directly from consumers. 

‘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,’ Temkin wrote.

Google had announced early last year that it would remove third-party cookies in 2022.  

On Wednesday the company confirmed that it will not build or use any alternatives to replace the technology for its own ad-buying tools. 

Instead, Google is testing a way for businesses to target ads to clusters of consumers with similar interests, which it says would protect privacy because it hides individual users in a crowd.

The technology, part of a project called the Privacy Sandbox, would use an algorithm to group people according to their common web browsing. Each group would have a minimum membership, so individuals can’t be identified.

Brands could target their ads to a cluster interested in buying a car, for example, rather than relying on cookies that have tracked specific users across car-buying websites. 

Big trade groups representing advertisers have called on Google to delay phasing out cookies until an alternative proves suitable. Google said in January that its tests show the clustering system could be effective.  

This is a developing story. 

‘Keeping the internet open requires all of us to do more to protect privacy’: Google exec explains tracking tech overhaul

David Temkin, Google’s director of product management for ads privacy and trust, explained the digital giant’s plans to phase out technology in its Chrome browser that lets other companies track users’ web browsing in a blog post on Wednesday. The post is shown in full below: 

‘Charting a course towards a more privacy-first web 

‘It’s difficult to conceive of the internet we know today — with information on every topic, in every language, at the fingertips of billions of people — without advertising as its economic foundation. But as our industry has strived to deliver relevant ads to consumers across the web, it has created a proliferation of individual user data across thousands of companies, typically gathered through third-party cookies. This has led to an erosion of trust: In fact, 72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81% say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits, according to a study by Pew Research Center. 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.

‘That’s why last year Chrome announced its intent to remove support for third-party cookies, and why we’ve been working with the broader industry on the Privacy Sandbox to build innovations that protect anonymity while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers. Even so, we continue to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers. 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.

‘We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII graphs based on people’s email addresses. We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long term investment. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.

‘Privacy innovations are effective alternatives to tracking

‘People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. And advertisers don’t need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising.

‘Advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers. In fact, our latest tests of FLoC show one way to effectively take third-party cookies out of the advertising equation and instead hide individuals within large crowds of people with common interests. Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release this month, and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2. Chrome also will offer the first iteration of new user controls in April and will expand on these controls in future releases, as more proposals reach the origin trial stage, and they receive more feedback from end users and the industry.

‘This points to a future where there is no need to sacrifice relevant advertising and monetization in order to deliver a private and secure experience.

First-party relationships are vital

‘Developing strong relationships with customers has always been critical for brands to build a successful business, and this becomes even more vital in a privacy-first world. We will continue to support first-party relationships on our ad platforms for partners, in which they have direct connections with their own customers. And we’ll deepen our support for solutions that build on these direct relationships between consumers and the brands and publishers they engage with.

‘Keeping the internet open and accessible for everyone requires all of us to do more to protect privacy — and that means an end to not only third-party cookies, but also any technology used for tracking individual people as they browse the web. We remain committed to preserving a vibrant and open ecosystem where people can access a broad range of ad-supported content with confidence that their privacy and choices are respected. We look forward to working with others in the industry on the path forward.’