With data harvesting and tracking, history tells us to beware the unintended consequences of even well-meaning developments.

The FLoC origin trial is an early but important step toward the Privacy Sandbox's goal of an open web that is both private by default and economically sustainable.” In response to this story, Google told me that “we strongly believe that FLoC is better for user privacy compared to the individual cross-site tracking that is prevalent today. Using the web, DuckDuckGo warns, will be “like walking into a store where they already know all about you.” You won’t be tracked as 45-year-old accountant, John Smith, of 101 Acacia Avenue, but the algorithm will be pretty specific about your interests and will readily share that with websites.

Put simply, that hidden, secretive algorithm tracks the sites you visit and your online activities to assign you to a group. A FLoC is basically a group of similar users, as judged by an algorithm sitting behind those users’ browsers. And while I’m sure this wasn’t designed to be confusing, it does come across as Pythonesque when explained. Google is replacing cookies with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which is now under trial without impacted Chrome users knowing about it. Unfortunately, that’s going to become very confusing. How Google plans to protect your privacy while mining your data to sell you more stuff-or rather to enable its business customers to sell you more stuff. But unlike Apple and Microsoft, the other two tech giants in the browser business, Google doesn't generate its revenue from products, it generates its revenue from data, your data, targeting ads.Īnd so, you’re about to be hit with complex and conflicting messages on how all this reconciles.

And Chrome has spent more than anyone on ensuring that its user experience is as sticky as it gets. Usability, speed, features, seamless cross-platform options, all are factors. If they really cared about privacy, they would just stop spying on billions of people.”Ĭhoosing a browser is a highly subjective matter. They care about protecting their surveillance business model. “You don’t become a multi-billion-dollar company without grabbing as much data as you can then monetize,” Cyjax CISO Ian Thornton-Trump told me last month, just after (genuinely) privacy-first DuckDuckGo warned that “Google doesn’t care about protecting user privacy.

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