Google FloC Explained

Chrome's third-party cookies are soon to be disabled. Is this to say that Google is poised to give away a significant portion of its ad revenue? Not.

Google is working on a new tracking mechanism called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). Users will be grouped into groups based on their surfing history, which advertisers will be able to purchase. Because this will no longer be done through the building of user profiles, Google is referring to it as a "privacy-first" approach to web browsing.

Let's take a closer look at what's changed and what it means for privacy…

Phasing out of Third-party cookies

Many websites will deposit third-party cookies on your device if you're using Chrome right now unless you click on the cookie opt-outs on the websites you visit.

These cookies might keep track of your surfing habits. They can build together a useful picture of you based on the data they collect: the sites you visit, how long you spend on each page, your hobbies, demographics, and location. Your profile can then be sold to advertisers so that hyper-relevant adverts can follow you across the internet.

Google said last year that third-party monitoring cookies would be phased out of Chrome by 2022. "Once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not construct replacement identifiers to follow individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products," the business said in a blog post in March.

Chrome is the final major browser to stop using tracking cookies. They are no longer supported by Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox.

What exactly is FLoC?

Google is presenting a new technique of following you, this time without the use of cookies. Federated Learning of Cohorts is the name of this new AI-based technology (FLoC).

Most website owners, of course, want their sites to be easily found by Google users. Google knows a lot about the purpose and contents of websites thanks to indexing information and different search engine optimization procedures made by site owners.

FLoC is a super-tracker that tracks your online behaviour across all websites and saves it in your Chrome browser. It generates your "cohort identity" using machine learning (ML) on the browser-based on your surfing behaviour. SimHash is an algorithm that generates "magic numbers" to analyse users' interests and arrange them into cohorts (groups of people with similar interests).

Advertisers will be able to buy into these cohorts using Google's existing ad bidding system. Instead of seeing advertisements tailored to your specific profile, you'll see ads tailored to the cohort(s) you've been allocated to.

What has truly changed?

Ordinary Chrome users will probably find it difficult to discern how the new approach would improve their experience. Your actions will still be tracked and you will be targeted for specific adverts, but now as part of a group rather than as an individual.

Because the method isn't based on the building of personal profiles, Google claims that users' privacy will be protected: they won't be targeted. Its purpose is to strike a compromise between individual interests and advertisers' need to know who their target viewers are.

Critics argue that the new strategy, rather than protecting privacy, actively undermines it.

This is why:

Companies may have access to more information about you than ever before.

It's possible that a corporation won't be able to identify you based on your cohort. However, FLoC implies that many websites will have a good sense of the type of person you are from the moment you contact them. Let's say you click on an advertisement for a job site. You go to a specific job application page by clicking on it. It is now possible to link your cohort ID to your personal information. Do you truly want potential employers to be aware of your true passions? True privacy entails the ability to reveal or conceal various aspects of your identity in various situations.

How can I avoid FLoC?

Please switch to a different browser. FLoC has been rejected by Mozilla, Brave, and DuckDuckGo. These are the browsers to use if you want to surf without being bombarded with advertising.

Blog By ~ Anshika