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On Tuesday, Google published an update on its Privacy Sandbox proposal, a plan thoroughly panned last summer as a desperate attempt to redefine privacy in a way that's compatible with the ad slinger's business.
In a blog post, Justin Schuh, director of Chrome engineering, asked the web community for help to increase the privacy of web browsing, something browser makers like Apple and Mozilla have already been doing on their own.
"After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete," wrote Schuh.
"Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers, and advertisers, and we have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds, we plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome."
That's a significant shift for a company that relies heavily on cookie data for its ad business. Google Display Network uses third-party cookies to serve behavior-based ads. And Google partners, like publishers that use Google Ad Manager to sell ads, will also be affected.
Over the past few years, as Apple, Brave, and Mozilla have taken steps to block third-party cookies by default and legislators have passed privacy legislation. Meanwhile, ad tech companies have tried to preserve their ability to track people online. Google has resisted third-party cookie blocking and last year began working on a way to preserve its data gathering while also accommodating certain privacy concerns.
Schuh said Google aims to drop third-party cookie support within two years, but added that Google "[needs] the ecosystem to engage on [its] proposals," a plea that makes it sound like the company's initial salvo of would-be web tech specs has been largely ignored.
In a phone interview with The Register, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Bennett Cyphers said there doesn't appear to have been much community interest in Google's proposals. "When they announced Privacy Sandbox last fall, they threw a bunch of code on GitHub. Those repos don't show much sign of engagement."
Cyphers said he couldn't speak to discussions at the W3C, but said people haven't shown much interest in Google's specs.
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the EFF, said in an email that Google is influential with standards bodies like the W3C but that doesn't mean the company will get what it wants by throwing its weight around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @07:17PM (5 children)
look how well that ended for broadcast radio and TV
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 16 2020, @07:21PM (2 children)
I do wonder sometimes, if CNN and MSNBC and Fox would be as bad as they are now if they didn't have ads, but had been part of an a la carte cable pricing system instead.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:10PM (1 child)
Somehow restricting MSNBC, FOX, or CNN's audience to only viewers who selected them and paid for each would seem to enhance the rhetoric filled echo-chamber effects.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:23PM
If they started doing so now absolutely would, because they've already burned every ounce of credibility those institutions have and appealing more strongly to shrinking audiences is all they have left.
But if they started that way, I'm not so sure. "We need to attract demographic X so run story Y" doesn't make any sense as a strategy without advertisers and their infinite checkboxes. It would probably bias them towards the interests of upper middle class people who think it's a positive image of themselves to watch news enough to pay money for it. But it would also quash the need to say "We must have more viewers in this time slot, get someone who makes everyone really angry"
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:20PM (1 child)
It worked pretty damn well when there were no alternatives like streaming or piracy, if you wanted to watch TV you had to bend over and take the ads or get up and do something else (in my case I was a kid and with only 1 family TV, so we muted the TV and bullshitted until the show came back on) -- and since there were no cell phones back then, there was none of that either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @11:40PM
So...your whole family is stupid? That explains a lot.