Third-party tracking cookies, which often "follow" internet users from website to website, are currently being phased out by Google Chrome, the world's most popular web browser, and this week Google went one step further promising not to replace third-party cookies with an equally invasive alternative.
No more hands in the cookie jar
The third-party cookie has been a core part of Google's advertising business for a long time and seeing as Alphabet (Google's parent company) made an astonishing $147bn in advertising revenue last year (80% of its total), it would be an unusual move for Google to do anything that would drastically diminish its ability to sell targeted ads.
So it's perhaps no surprise then that Google does have something in place to keep its ad business pumping, something they are calling the "Federated Learning of Cohorts", or FLoC if you want a new acronym to forget later.
Google says that FLoC "proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar interests... [which] effectively hides individuals “in the crowd”". Sounds good. Then comes the most telling line of all; Google's tests of FLoC reveal that "advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising". So a pretty good replacement then.
If FLoC can replace third-party cookies, deliver similar results for advertisers, and give users a little more privacy then it really is a win-win-win — and kudos to Google if so. If in practice it doesn't work as well as in theory, and the $150bn advertising juggernaut falters substantially, then Googlewill really have an ethical dilemma on its hands.
