We throw everything away and start over. Google has just presented a new alternative to third-party cookies, which the computer giant intends to ban from its Chrome browser by the end of 2023. Indeed, following the numerous criticisms collected by the ecosystem, the American company preferred to bury its idea of federated learning of cohorts (FLoC) and is back on the attack with a new concept: “Topics”.
The goal always remains the same. This is to allow advertisers to be able to display targeted advertisements while protecting the identity of Internet users as much as possible. With FLoC, these were classified into groups (or cohorts) which shared the same centers of interest and which the advertisers could know through a programming interface.
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But the system had several flaws. First of all, it was difficult to explain to Internet users. Just the name scared me away. Paradoxically, the classification in cohorts could facilitate fingerprinting, this illegal technique which seeks to identify surreptitiously Internet users by JavaScript requests. Finally, the FLoC was probably not in compliance with the GDPR, which requires that the Internet user can access personal data transmitted to third parties. Which is difficult in the context of cohorts, where everything is drowned.
On these three points, the new “Topics” concept seems to have made progress. This time, it is easier to understand what the Internet user’s browser transmits, namely a list of themes, such as “fitness” or “travel”. It represents the centers of interest of the Internet user and is calculated each week from the browsing history. This calculation is made by a machine learning model and is based on the names of the domains visited (not the URL).
At any time, the Internet user can know the themes selected by his browser, which can therefore be transmitted to advertisers. He can delete some of them from the list or choose to deactivate everything. As the process is centered on the individual, it should be more GDPR-compatible than FLoC.
As for fingerprinting, Google assures that “Topics” would be more effective. Thus, Google injects 5% of noise in the calculation of the themes, which makes it possible to blur the profile of the Internet user. In addition, advertisers will not be able to access the entire list of themes. Each will receive only a part of it, according to a rather complex process of distribution. This prevents an actor from collecting themes en masse on many sites in an attempt to track Internet users.
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It remains to be seen what the advertising ecosystem thinks of it. “We will soon be launching a Topics experiment on Chrome that includes user controls and allows website developers and advertisers to test this API. The final design of user controls, as well as other technical aspects of how Topics works, will be determined based on your feedback and what we learn from this experimentation”says Vinay Goel, product manager Google Privacy Sandbox, in a blog post.
But the advertising market is still far from accepting Google’s technological diktat. The proof: in Germany, a coalition of press and advertising players sent a complaint to the European Commission, because it considers that the planned stoppage of third-party cookies in Chrome goes against European competition law. “If Google is allowed to implement the planned measures, all players in this ecosystem will suffer significantly – with the exception of Google itself”, they say. The future of online advertising is still very uncertain.
Source: google