Vivaldi
Google wants to kill third-party tracking cookies used for Chrome ads with the “Chrome Privacy Sandbox” Because Google is also the largest advertising company in the world, however, it does not kill cookies. pursuit without putting anything else in its place. Google’s replacement plan is for Chrome to create an ad profile for you locally through a system called “FLoC” (Federated Cohort Learning). Rather than having advertisers collect your browsing history to create an individual profile on their servers, Google wants to keep this data locally and have a browser that broadcasts a list of your interests to advertisers or how many times it requests via an API, so that We will continue to receive relevant ads. Google claims that recruiting your browser to track your advertising interests is a gain in privacy, as it keeps your exact local browsing history and only publishes anonymous interest lists. However, Google does not have many other companies in its corner.
One of the first to come out against Google’s plan was EFF, which in March wrote a blog post entitled “Google’s FLoC is a terrible idea.” EFF seems to be against fully tracking users for ads, saying that Google’s classification of the issue is based on a false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking”.
“There is no one or the other,” writes EFF. “Instead of reinventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world without the countless problems of targeted ads.” EFF is concerned that FLoC will not prevent advertisers from personally identifying individuals and that the API will provide complete profile data on first contact with a site, avoiding tracking companies from doing profile building work over time. . He also claims that “targeted advertising equipment has been frequently used for exploitation, discrimination and injury”.
Google’s browser competitors also came out against FLoC. Mozilla told The Verge, “We are currently evaluating many of our privacy proposals, including those submitted by Google, but we have no current plans to implement any of them at this time.” The Firefox developer continued “We don’t buy on the assumption that the industry needs billions of data points about people, which are collected and shared without their understanding, to deliver relevant advertising.”
As for the other major independent browser provider, Apple, it’s hard to imagine being on board with FLoC, given how pro-privacy and anti-advertising network it has been in the past. Although it does not have an official statement, Webkit engineer (Safari rendering engine) John Wilander said that the WebKit team “did not say we will implement [FLoC] and we have our own prevention policy. “
Then, how do the many chrome forks feel about FLoC? A “no” here would mean removing the code from the browser’s code base. Verge also pinged Microsoft about his feelings and received a long, winding response, which I don’t think comes down to a clear “yes” or “no” to FLoC:
We believe in a future where the web can give people privacy, transparency and control, while supporting responsible business models to create a vibrant, open and diverse ecosystem. Like Google, we accept solutions that give users clear consent and do not circumvent consumer choices. Therefore, we do not accept solutions that use the user’s identity signals without consent, such as fingerprinting. The industry is on a journey and there will be browser-based proposals that do not require individual user IDs and ID-based proposals that are based on consent and relationships with first parties. We will continue to explore these approaches with the community. Recently, for example, we were pleased to introduce a possible approach, as described in our PARAKEET proposal. This proposal is not the final iteration, but an evolving document.
Brave has a full post about why it’s disabling FLoC, saying it’s harmful to users and “a step in the wrong direction,” citing many of the same concerns the EFF has. The Vivaldi browser also has a blog post (and chart above) detailing why it won’t support FLoC, saying that “Google’s new data collection company is ugly” and “a dangerous step that harms users’ privacy.” .
There have been some reports that WordPress, which feeds about 34% of all sites on the Internet, will block FLoC, but this is just a proposal from one of its contributors. The founding developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, says the company has not made any “decisions or changes” on FLoC.
DuckDuckGo, one of Google’s search engine rivals, also appeared against FLoC and, in addition to disabling it on search pages, launched a Chrome extension that blocks FLoC tracking on the web. I don’t think I’ve seen a company other than Google claim that FLoC is a great idea.
FLoC is currently running as a track in Chrome and, as of March 30, is enabled for “0.5% of Chrome users.” The EFF website amifloced.org will let you know if you are one of the lucky few.
Part of Chrome’s “magic” is that if Google doesn’t see value in reaching an industry-wide consensus, Google doesn’t need anyone else’s cooperation when it comes to it. Chrome has about 70% of the browser market share. Google controls the largest advertising network in the world. These ads are displayed on some of the most popular websites, which Google also controls, such as Google.com (number 1 in the world) and YouTube (number 2). The ads are also displayed on the world’s most popular operating system, Android Google, which has over 2.5 billion monthly active users. There is also the Chrome operating system, which is now the second most popular desktop operating system and is particularly successful in schools. The company regularly slips its own web “standards” into the first Google ecosystem, such as the early launches of WebP, VP8 / 9 and SPDY / HTTP / 2, and could, if it wished, do the same with FLoC.