Google wants to stop individual tracking of users within a few years. The company says all unique identifiers will be removed once third party cookies are phased out. These are trackers from Google itself as well as from other advertisers.
In this way, Google no longer wants to track people individually across different websites, the company writes in a blog post . Google also says it will not make alternative identifiers to track people. It will therefore no longer be possible for third-party advertisers to use such identifiers in Google products. Google does not name specific products, but is talking about all the software that the company makes.
The termination of the identifiers happens “as soon as third party cookies have been phased out,” writes Google. The company said in January last year that this must be done ‘within two years’ , although no hard deadline has yet been set. Stopping third party cookies is part of Privacy Sandbox, a series of proposals that Google made in 2020 .
Privacy Sandbox consists of multiple measures and open web standards that allow users to remain anonymous while still seeing relevant advertisements. There are APIs that measure click conversion and a budget to combat fingerprinting .
Google says it includes discontinuing first party identifiers. Google wants to significantly change the advertising model of the internet. “72 percent of users feel that everything they do online is being tracked by advertisers and technology companies. If the digital ad industry doesn’t address these growing concerns, we risk losing the free and open web,” writes David. Temkin from the company in the blog post.
The company also prohibits alternative tracking methods other than cookies. These are, for example, ways to track someone from their e-mail address. Still, according to Google, there are still ways in which websites can advertise in a targeted way.
The company mentions “advances in aggregate, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy preservation technologies.” With this, Google hopes that advertisers will from now on mainly use the Privacy Sandbox techniques that it offers itself. Privacy Sandbox is not uncontroversial. The British market watchdog already started an investigation into it in January .
