“This website uses cookies, by clicking ‘accept’ you consent to our cookies and other tracking technology”
The average Internet user comes across the above statement at least once a day. Cookies (the non-edible ones,) are part of a coding system that tracks your internet activities and allows new sites you visit, see the previous sites that you have visited.
These websites store their information on your browser making it easy to track. Technology companies like Google use these cookies to display ads across the web with the information gathered from different sites.
When using the internet, cookies are pretty useful. They help users auto-fill passwords, payment details and other necessary information. However, over time, the interference of cookies have become burdensome so much so that Internet users have had to download adblockers to help protect their privacy.
According to research done to the Pews Research Center, 72% of internet users feel their activities are being tracked by advertisements and companies, while 81% believe that the potential risks of having their personal information used by third parties outweigh the benefits.
Google’s decision
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’ – David Temkin, the Director of Product Management, Ads, Privacy and Trust, Google.
In a blog post titled: ‘Charting a course through a more privacy-first web’ which was published on the 3rd of March 2021, Google announced that it will be removing the third-party tracking feature on its websites.
According to the post which was written by Temkin, the reason for the removal of support for third-party cookies is to “build innovations that protect anonymity while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers”.
Google is not the first to stop the use of third-party cookies, as Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari have done the same. The company is however the first to produce a replacement. In a blog post published on the 25th of January, Google stated that it has created a Privacy Sandbox as an alternative to third-party cookies. The Privacy Sandbox called FLoC – Federated Learning of Cohorts is a technology for interest-based advertising.
The FLoC is a cohort tracking program that seeks to study user behaviour and categorize these users based on their interests and habits. That is, instead of ads being targeted at individuals, companies could target their ads to larger groups with similar interests.
Implications
On the surface, Google’s decision may appear to be a step in favour of privacy and data protection, but it is not so. The implication of Google’s decision is not that the website will stop collecting cookies or that the information gathered will not be used for ad purposes.
The implication is that Google will stop selling ads that are targeted at individual users and Google Chrome will stop allowing cookies to collect user’s data. Google, however, will have little or nothing to lose as it will still collect user information and will still target ads towards its users in cohorts.
What Google seeks to do is not new, it’s a concept similar to the model being employed by Facebook. A method is a form of consumer profiling whereby one can create a customised audience (i.e. a group of users with similar interests or even mixed interests) that will be used by advertisers to target their ads. The implication of Google’s FLoC program is to collect data but in a more anonymous and less ‘invasive’ way.
This move by Google is in the Company’s sole interest, contrary to what they want the public to believe. By removing third-party cookies, Google will only stifle its other competitors thereby giving it an unfair advantage. The company will still retain consumer information, and will still use it for tracking purposes. The only minor difference is that Chrome users will now be tracked in groups as opposed to being tracked individually.
Reactions
The European Commission on the 22nd of June 2021 stated that it has begun an investigation into Google for ‘possible anti-competitive conduct’ in the market. The Commission stated that it will “examine whether Google is distorting competition by restricting access by third parties to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps while reserving such data for its use.”
Margrethe Vestager, the Vice President in charge of the EC’s Competition Policy, stated that the European government is “concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack.”
The United Kingdom is not the only party to react as the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton dismissed Google’s cohort tracking program calling it a “social credit score based on group identity”. In October 2020 and later in December 2020 the U.S Attorneys General filed an anti-trust complaint against Google and view Google’s Privacy Sandbox as an anti-competition strategy and a way of preventing its competitors from gaining access to relevant information on consumer behaviour.
Although Google’s decision will not take effect until 2022, one can only anticipate the turn of events within that period. However things go, one thing is certain – the privacy of internet users should be prioritized above all else.
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