Google Proposes New Privacy and Anti-Fingerprinting Controls for the Web ⇥ techcrunch.com
Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch:
What Google basically wants to do here is change the incentive structure for the advertising ecosystem. Instead of trying to circumvent a browser’s cookie and fingerprinting restrictions, the privacy budget, in combination with the industry’s work on federated learning and differential privacy, this is meant to give advertisers the tools they need without hurting publishers, while still respecting the users’ privacy. That’s not an easy switch and something that, as Google freely acknowledges, will take years.
An independent study from earlier this year by Carnegie Mellon found that publishers lose only 4% of their revenue when cookies are blocked by users. Google cites their own study finding that dropping the “behavioural” part of behavioural advertising cost publishers over 50% of their revenue. Those are remarkably different figures, and Google’s result will be tainted by its inherent conflict of interest.
For what it’s worth, the New York Times dropped ad exchanges entirely for European visitors after GDPR took effect, preferring to sell ads directly, and digital advertising revenue grew.
For the time being, though, there’s nothing here for you to try out or any bits being shipped in the Chrome browser. For now, this is simply a proposal and an effort on the Chrome team’s part to start a conversation. We should expect the company to start experimenting with some of these ideas in the near future, though.
Imagine, if you will, a glorious future where Google, the advertising company known for massive privacy violations, building you a special private Google-controlled web where the icky bad guys can’t track you! Lucky you.
There are things in Google’s proposal that require broader support from ad tech companies and browser vendors, but there’s a lot Google could do today with its market dominating position in both industries. Like Facebook, Google is attempting to distort the definition of privacy beyond what any user would expect so that its core business is not impacted by increased scrutiny.