Google has turned the entire Internet against them. The company has wanted to implement FLoC in its web browsers in order to kill third-party cookies. While this could be an improvement for privacy, in reality Google would be taking a monopoly on user browsing data . Therefore, the company has just announced a long delay in its implementation.
Thus, Google has confirmed that support for third-party cookies will continue to be available at least until the second half of 2023. The plan to end these cookies began in 2019, and with it they wanted to make it more difficult for Websites track users between different websites by eliminating unique identifiers and grouping users into groups with other people with the same interests.
FLoC: better privacy, but cut out the competition
In January 2020, Google stated that it would begin implementing the change within two years, which meant that the arrival of the Privacy Sandbox was planned for 2022. However, due to the difficulties it is having with the regulators of United Kingdom, has had to delay it at least one more year. Developers will have access to the tools for their development at the end of 2022. Later, in mid-2023 , they will eliminate cookies from the third-party browser in a period of three months that will end at the end of 2023 .
All change proposals will go through a rigorous and public development process that will be divided into three phases. First there will be a discussion phase in forums like GitHub or W3C groups. Later tests will be done to receive an opinion on how the function can be improved, and the last phase will be the launch phase, including it in Chrome and giving the option to integrate it into other websites.
Regulators in several countries have been very concerned about FLoC, as, as we say, even if it improves privacy, it eliminates competition in the ad market. The UK authority, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stated that it would block this move by Google if the change was not made in a way that could ensure competitiveness and privacy.
Google wants to be more open
Google affirms that the changes that it is going to introduce will guarantee that digital services remain open for all companies, and therefore develop open standards that give access to other companies, but that allow a correct control of the data.
For this reason, Google has decided to delay its implementation to ensure that it complies with everything that regulators require, where basically the only thing they have to guarantee is competition and free access to their tools, and not deprive others of it.
Regulators are getting more and more serious against big tech companies, and in recent years there has been a fierce fight to ensure both business-to-business competitiveness and user privacy, as there is a growing concentration of technology. power in a few tech companies, plus constant privacy breaches . The latter are intended to model us as consumers to know our preferences and launch personalized ads based on them, something that the Privacy Sandbox would help to avoid.
