Google won't be tracking you anymore?

Jtalk4456 · March 3, 2021

Summary

Cookies are being phased out of the Chrome browser next year, and Google is stating that it will not be build or use any other tracking technology to track web browsing traffic.

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Google first announced it would get rid of third-party cookies, which for decades has enabled online ads, early last year to meet growing data privacy standards in Europe and the United States.

Privacy activists for years have criticized tech companies including Google for using cookies to gather web browsing records across websites they don't own, enabling them to develop profiles on users' interests to serve personalized ads. ¹

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"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," Google said in the blog post. ¹

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Google and other companies will indeed come up with other ways to properly serve you ads still, it just won’t be as personal.

Instead, Google will turn to methods like Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which group you into crowds of people with similar interests, taking individual identifiers out of the equation. They’ll start broader testing of FLoC in Q2 through their Google Ads platform.

Google also plans to offer new user controls over privacy starting in Chrome 90 that will let you turn on or off targeted ads. Those controls will expand over time, but that’ll be the first one. ²

My thoughts

I never let myself place a company in a moral bearing when it comes to tech. The only truth I am confident on is the motivation of money to a business. Any business half as large as Google doesn't get where they are unless they know how to make money. This would seem a move that loses them substantial money, so there's only a few possibilities I see.

1. Public pressure has forced them to make the choice with business as normal getting them bad press and potentially loss of business. This is great because this would mean the public has truly done their job giving companies a reason to be better. If the public cares enough, things will get better guaranteed

2. Government pressure around the world has them future proofing their business model and trying to be one of the first on the scene to "lead the way for privacy". This is great as well because if politics demands better of society, I simply can't argue. It's the job of government to protect its citizens and I think this falls in line with that.

3. They decided to out of the goodness of their collective corporate hearts... Probably not. Again I never take a moral bearing with companies, so even if this was a case where leaders at google thought this was the right thing to do, why not sooner then? Why the post, why not just a quiet change for the better? At minimum, it's a good PR move that will positively impact the world I think. And I can't argue with that. Good intentions are great, but good actions are greater, so if they did a good action for the wrong reason, I'll still be fine with the action.

Overall: I think the best part here is the influence this will likely have in normalizing better practices. Just like Amazon has made shipping in a few days normal, Google has the chance to make better privacy normal, with other businesses following suit soon after. Any who don't follow will risk public outrage as they deserve.

Sources

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/google-wont-use-other-web-tracking-tools-after-phasing-out-cookies/ar-BB1ecdGn ¹

https://www.droid-life.com/2021/03/03/google-says-it-soon-wont-track-your-browsing-anymore/ ²