Security News > 2022 > January > Google Drops FLoC and Introduces Topics API to Replace Tracking Cookies for Ads

Google on Tuesday announced that it is abandoning its controversial plans for replacing third-party cookies in favor of a new Privacy Sandbox proposal called Topics, which categorizes users' browsing habits into approximately 350 topics.

Subsequently, when a user visits a participating site, the Topics selects three of the interests - one topic from each of the past three weeks - to share with the site and its advertising partners.

To give more control over the framework, users can not only see the topics but also remove topics or disable it altogether.

By labeling each website with a recognizable, high-level topic and sharing the most frequent topics associated with the browsing history, the idea is to facilitate interest-based advertising by showing users more relevant ads, without needing to know the specific sites that have been visited.

Topics, which is expected to be launched as a developer trial in Chrome browser, employs machine learning to infer topics from hostnames and is designed to exclude sensitive categories, such as sexual orientation, religion, gender, or race, Google pointed out.

"Because Topics is powered by the browser, it provides you with a more recognizable way to see and control how your data is shared, compared to tracking mechanisms like third-party cookies," Vinay Goel, privacy director of Privacy Sandbox, said.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2022/01/google-drops-floc-and-introduces-topics.html