Last Updated on 27/01/2022 by Nidhi Khandelwal
Google stated on Tuesday that it is dropping its contentious plans to replace third-party cookies in favor of a new Privacy Sandbox concept called Topics, which divides users’ browsing behavior into about 350 categories.
Users’ browser history for a particular week is slotted into a handful of top pre-designated interests (i.e., subjects) that are only maintained on the device for a revolving period of three weeks under the new system, which replaces FLoC (short for Federated Learning of Cohorts).
When a user visits a participating site, the Topics API selects three of the user’s interests to share with the site and its advertising partners – one topic from each of the previous three weeks. Users can not only give themselves greater control over the framework, but they can also give themselves more control over the framework.
The idea is to facilitate interest-based advertising by showing users more relevant ads without having to know the specific sites that have been visited by labeling each website with a recognisable, high-level topic and sharing the most frequent topics associated with the
browsing history by labeling each website with a recognisable, high-level topic and sharing the most frequent topics associated with the browsing history.
Topics also wants to address some of the key issues with FLoC, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) described as a bad idea that puts users’ privacy at danger.
The change is part of Google’s aim to phase out third-party cookies due to privacy concerns. The efforts, dubbed Privacy Sandbox, attempt to develop privacy-focused alternatives that limit user monitoring on the internet.
