Google Introduces New Privacy Standards to Protect Web Browsing Data

For starters, Google is studying techniques that would only show that you are a member of a group with specific advertising tastes (for example, laptops and polka) until it is clear that "Thousands" of other people are part of this mix. She also wants to set up a "privacy budget" that only allows sites to make requests for data as long as a user belongs to a large enough group. After that, they are stuck. Google and Apple are also exploring ways to track ad conversions (ie clicks generating sales) without allowing cross-site tracking. Google also hopes that ad fraud prevention methods will also benefit from privacy-focused systems, such as CloudFlare's standard PrivacyPass.

As with other open standards, Privacy Sandbox will only be effective if the use is reasonable. Just ask Google how difficult it is to play VP9 videos on some devices. However, Google believes that there are good reasons to adopt its approach. Data privacy is a growing concern for many businesses. However, blocking cookies does not really solve the problem: it limits the ability to show relevant ads and tempts sites to profile people in more invasive ways (such as fingerprints). In theory, such a balance could allow the ad-supported Web to flourish without prompting users or regulators to take drastic action.