Google wants a privacy-first web based
Google is phasing out third-party cookies in order to focus on privacy.
And she makes clear that she will not replace it with something very important, despite the impact the change has on the profitable advertising business of the search giant.
Google said in a post that it will not create alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse the web after the third-party cookies disappear.
Google Books: Our products are supported across the web by APIs that maintain privacy and prevent individual tracking while still providing results to advertisers and publishers.
She added: Advances in collection, anonymization, cross-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path for the replacement of individual identifiers.
Third-party cookies were blocked for a period of time in Safari and Firefox, although browsers differ in the extent to which they go, and Google plans to do the same in Chrome.
Cookies allow advertisers to track you as you move between different websites, giving advertisers a better idea of your interests.
These highly targeted ads are of great value, which has created an advertising industry in which individual user data is disseminated across thousands of companies.
Google says: This practice has led to a lack of confidence in the Internet by users or advertisers, which puts the future of the web at risk.
Advertising is still the primary way for many online companies to make money, which is why Google says it wants to move away from third-party cookies and move toward the more private web first.
Despite all the talk about privacy, Google makes clear that it is not trying to get rid of targeted ads in general, but rather that it wants to replace the old, more penetrating methods with a new method of its own design, which is called Privacy Sandbox.
Part of the Privacy Sandbox's mission is to hide an individual in a large crowd of similar interest groups that are then targeted by ads.
Google's embrace of the privacy-dependent web comes first amid mounting regulatory pressure from around the world.
"We understand that this means that other service providers may offer a level of ad tracking across the web that we will not provide, such as: graphs of personally identifiable information based on people's email addresses," the company says.
She added: We do not believe these solutions meet growing consumer expectations for privacy, will not withstand rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and are therefore not a long-term sustainable investment.