Millions of people are part of a worldwide experiment to eliminate cookies forever. Google has been testing innovative browser-based technology in Chrome since last month, and it has the potential to transform the global advertising market completely. The majority of those interested in the trial are presumably unaware of it, but critical voices are voicing concerns as the project progresses.
German, French, and Belgian regulators are also scrutinising Google’s plans. Simultaneously, several of the world’s more famous websites have chosen to bypass Google’s trials altogether, with a host of businesses finding ways for users to circumvent the framework.
The Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) scheme is part of Google’s larger Privacy Sandbox programme, which would see the end of third-party targeting cookies in early 2022. Websites choose which advertisements to display you in one of three forms. You may see an ad for a pair of shoes because you placed them in your shopping cart last week; whether you’re reading an article about cars, the advertisements you see might also be about automobiles; or the ads you see might be dependent on your preferences. FLoC, like third-party cookies, is concerned with ads depending on your preferences.
Cookies currently enable marketers to send you advertisements tailored to you because they are dependent on your unique browsing history. FLoC is intended to eliminate this person targeting by broadening the net. If you use FLoC, Chrome can collect your web background and link it to other people’s patterns. You would then be assigned to a squad, or cohort, of thousands of other people who are similar to you. Advertisers would also advertise whole populations of people rather than actual people.
It’s not only the magnitude of the transition but also who’s behind it. Google, whose holding firm Alphabet made a staggering $55 billion in sales in the previous three months, controls the worldwide advertising market. Regulators are rightly concerned.
“The FLoC technology raises some concerns about the GDPR’s legal requirements,” says Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data protection commissioner. “Integrating users into FLoCs could be seen as a processing of personal details. And this necessitates voluntarily granted permission as well as direct and open facts regarding these operations.” In brief, Google must ensure that users actually want to use FLoC rather than getting the system enabled by default in Chrome. Caspar continues that there are risks in how cohorts will be used to “draw assumptions” on people’s browsing habits and how specific FLoC cohorts would be.
FLoC is confusing more than just German regulators. A spokesperson for France’s data regulator, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, says the country is “especially attentive” to technology that may substitute cookies because it could need access to details already stored on people’s computers. According to the CNIL, such a scheme will necessitate “specific, knowledgeable, and unambiguous approval.” If Google fails to do so, the consequences may be serious. The French regulator fined Google $120 million in December 2020 for not seeking people’s consent when using cookies.
Other officials are more concerned about competition issues. Officials in Belgium are eager to learn how future competitive programmes can be and how they can conform to data privacy laws. Since January, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and data privacy agency, the Information Commissioner’s Office, have been looking at Google’s plans. And the Irish Data Protection Commission, which is in charge of many big technology firms with European headquarters in Dublin, claims it has been working with Google on the plans.
Google is fully conscious of the possible pitfalls of FLoC. For example, the technology is yet to be tested in the European Union. “EU privacy legislation establishes strong expectations for interface accountability and regulation, which is what we plan for FLoC,” says Marshall Vale, a Chrome product manager at Google. “We understand that the involvement of data privacy agencies is critical to making this correct, which is why we have started early stage discussions regarding the technology and our plans.” Google has also stated that it intends to launch software that would enable users to opt-out of being assigned to FLoC cohorts.
