FLoC, Privacy Sandbox and Google – Latest Updates

You might have recently heard of FLoC and Topics and Google’s Privacy Sandbox. What are these things and how do they affect you? Today, we will break that down for you.

What is the Privacy Sandbox?

With all the recent concerns for online privacy, Google announced the Privacy Sandbox – a collection of tools intended to improve user experience while still providing necessary data to potential advertisers. The goal is to create a safe way to browse and yet still get relevant information.

What is FLoC?

Google recently announced that they would be replacing Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) with Topics. FLoC was a privacy initiative that didn’t go over as well as hoped, so Topics will take its place.

Topics is a new option for interest-based advertising. Basically, while browsing the internet, you will be presented with ads relevant to the top few, very general, subjects you have searched for in the past week or so. This information is not saved or stored anywhere besides your own device.

What Will Topics Do?

Topics is based on the user browsing history and does not involve external servers. This means more privacy for you while you are searching the internet, but you will still see ads that are loosely targeted to your recent interests. This will give you, the user, more control over what is being gathered and disseminated about you.

The left is how 3rd party cookies look to users now. The right demonstrates how Topics will look in Chrome, making it easier for users to control them. Source: Google.

Do I Need to Do Anything?

No, as the user, there is currently nothing to do. Once this is rolled out, users will be able to go into participating browsers and control the data being kept. This is just one more step to Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies and increasing user privacy.

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