After Google started launching FLoC to some Chrome users as a replacement for third-party cookies, the technology became quite controversial. Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox have confirmed that they have no immediate plans to adopt FLoC.
Google is positioning FLoC or Federated Cohort Learning as a new standard for the web. This is an idea that privacy-focused companies such as Brave, Vivaldi and DuckDuckGo have openly discussed their opposition, calling FLoC “confidentiality”, even when technology is trying to avoid it.
However, despite Google Chrome’s dominance in the desktop browser market, it can’t do it alone. With Brave and Vivaldi off the table, what will happen to Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Opera? At the moment, it seems that they do not intend to adopt the technology either.
Talking to The Verge, the companies behind Edge, Firefox and Opera said they have no current plans to adopt FLoC. Microsoft said:
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 choice. Therefore, we do not accept solutions that use users’ 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 the first party. 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.
This is by no means a direct statement about the future for FLoC and Microsoft Edge, but it doesn’t look like Microsoft is still a big fan.
Moreover, Mozilla explained that it evaluates “advertising proposals for maintaining privacy” for Firefox, including FLoC, but at the moment, the browser does not bring the new technology to its users.
We are currently evaluating many of the advertising proposals for privacy, including those submitted by Google, but we have no current plans to implement any of them at this time.
We don’t believe that the industry needs billions of data points about people, which are collected and shared without their understanding, in order to run relevant ads. That’s why we’ve implemented Enhanced Tracking Protection by default to block more than ten billion trackers a day, and we continue to innovate in new ways to protect people who use Firefox.
Advertising and privacy can coexist. And the advertising industry may work differently than it has in previous years. We look forward to playing a role in finding solutions to build a better web.
Apple, on the other hand, has not released an official statement on its position for FLoC support in Safari. An Apple WebKit engineer, John Wilander, recently addressed the controversy in a tweet and has since done so reached other parts of the technology. Based on his tweet, it appears that Apple has no immediate plans to adopt FLoC.
It is possible that all three of these browsers – Edge, Safari and Firefox – will adopt FLoC in time, but it is not clear which way Google’s initiative will see in the coming years.
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