Google is making inroads, creating an advertising platform for user tracking directly in Chrome – Ars Technica

Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s new invasive ad platform, ironically labeled “Privacy Sandbox,” is also being widely rolled out to Chrome today. If you’re not, this feature will track which web pages you visit and create a list of ad topics that it will share with web pages when you ask, and it’s built right into your Chrome browser. It was previously in the news as “FLoC” and then “Topics API,” and despite widespread opposition from almost every non-advertiser in the world, Google owns Chrome and is one of the largest advertising companies in the world, so it’s being railroaded into building Production.

Google seems to know this won’t be popular. Unlike Google’s eye-catching blog post on the front page that the redesign got, the big ad platform’s launch announcement is hidden on the home page Privacysandbox.com page. The blog post says the ad platform reaches “general availability” today, meaning it’s been rolled out to most Chrome users. This has been a long time coming, though Application programming interfaces It’s been out for about a month and a million more steps in beta and development releases, but now the work is finally done.

Users should see a pop-up when they start Chrome soon, letting them know that Ad Privacy has been rolled out to them and enabled. The new popup has been reaching users all week. As you can see in the pop-up, all of Google’s documentation on this feature looks like it was written on the opposite day, with Google describing the browser-based advertising platform as “an important step on the path toward a fundamentally more private web.”

The argument here is that one day — not now, but someday — Google pledges to turn off third-party tracking cookies in Chrome, and that the new ad platform, which has some limitations, is better than a third-party free-for-all. Party cookies. The problem is that third-party cookies mostly only affect Chrome users. Both Apple and Firefox have been blocking third-party cookies for years and will not implement Google’s new advertising system, only Chromium browsers still allow it.

That’s actually what started this whole process: Apple dealt a huge blow to Google’s core revenue stream when it blocked third-party cookies in Safari in 2020. And while that was a win for privacy, Google didn’t even follow suit. You can secure your advertising business. Federated learning for cohorts and now a topics API are part of a plan to offer an “alternative” tracking platform, and Google argues that there he have To be an alternative to tracking, you can’t be spied on. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also argued this when it called Google’s FLoC “Terrible idea“, saying”[Google’s] The framing is based on the false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking.” It’s not either or. Instead of reinventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world free of the countless problems caused by targeted advertising.

Chrome has some controls built into the browser now. Just go to Chrome Settings, then “Privacy & Security,” then “Ad Privacy” (alternatively, paste “chrome://settings/adPrivacy” into the address bar). From there, you can click through to both three Individual pages and turn off the top checkbox, and with just six clicks, you can turn off the advertising platform. If you leave it on for a while, you can check out the Ad Topics page, where Google will show you the ads and things you want to see in Chrome. This list is sent to advertisers when you visit the page.

Google says it will block third-party cookies in the second half of 2024, after ensuring that its “Privacy Sandbox” would allow it to remain profitable. Has any user in the world wanted a user tracking and advertising platform integrated directly into their browser? Probably not, but this is Google, they control Chrome, and that probably won’t get people to switch to Firefox.