GOOGLE's new TRACKING method is even WORSE - What FloC is, and what it means
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Google announced in early March that they would stop using third party cookies to track you across Google ads, and Chrome. It seems, on paper, like it's a good thing: after all, less tracking means less intrusion in our privacy, less data collected, and a more private web, right?
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Google will stop selling web ads targeted to your individual browsing habits. What they did previously was cross reference cookies that many websites had left on your device by integrating Google ads. By adding up all these cookies, they could have a very good picture of what pages you had browsed, what stuff you were interested in, and they targeted their ads based on this.
This can seem like a good thing, since you're seeing relevant ads, but what matters here is that this practice was never really disclosed, unless you were reading the privacy policies of all the websites you were browsing. This tracking happened without the user's knowledge, and all the various regulations that were put in place, like GDPR, only served to make it more confusing, with users routinely clicking "accept all cookies" to dismiss a huge pop-up window.
So this is gone, or it will be by 2022 if you're using Chrome. If you're using Firefox, or Safari, then you'll also be protected against these cookies that have the sole purpose of tracking you.
Google will still be able to collect your data through mobile applications though, on Android and iOS. Each app that uses the Google Ad Network will still collect and send data from that app to Google, and link it to your Google profile.
This new thing is called Floc, for Federated learning of Cohorts. Google bills it as a "privacy-first" and "interest based" ad technology.
Using this new tech, Chrome will still track your browsing habits around the web, looking at what pages you read, and visited. Depending on what categories of pages you've read, how long you've spent on them, how often you came back, Google will place you into cohorts, basically groups of people centered around various interests.
For example, if you visit tons of Linux websites, you'll be put into a "Linux cohort", or a "tech cohort". If you also visited tons of websites about cooking, you'll also be put in a "Cooking cohort". Advertisers will then tell Google, I'd like to target these cohorts, and if you're a part of them, you'll see ads related to the cohorts you're put in by Google, depending on how much each advertiser has bid to buy this ad slot.
## What does that change?
In terms of ad experience, if that's even a thing, nothing. You'll still see ads targeted to your browsing experience. But the important thing is, this will only work if you're using Chromium. Of you're using another browser, that presumably won't implement Google's FLOC tech, then your browsing habits won't be stored, and transmitted to Google, so you won't be tracked at all, at least not on websites that don't belong to Google.
If you want to stick to Chrome, though, as many people do, you'll still be more anonymous: tracking will be based on the cohorts, which don't contain personal info, at least that's what Google says, compared to the current method, where Google knows that its YOU, as a person, that likes the various topics you've been browsing.
It's an interesting move, that will have wide reaching consequences for the ad industry: it's a method that only Google can use through Chrome. Other ad networks, like Facebook's, or other various ones around the world, won't be able to make use of that. They'll have to come up with their own solution to track you around the web, and that might prove difficult without owning the browser or the operating system.
While this move goes towards privacy, it also goes towards reinforcing Google's monopoly on ads: if Google is the only one to have good segmentation of users, and to let advertisers have good, relevant targeting, then advertisers will only use Google's ad network. The other ones will slowly lose market share, and Google will have an even bigger monopoly, another one, on the internet and its monetization. Probably not such a good thing at all.