After the investigation by the British regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and the suspicions of the French Cnil, the time has come for German press publishers to file a complaint against Google with the European Commission. The announced abandonment of third-party cookies (small advertising trackers allowing the online journey of Internet users to be observed) on the Chrome browser, planned for 2023, continues to cause a stir.
“We are now open to working with all regulators who wish to do so, regardless of where they come from. And prove to them that our new project, the Privacy Sandbox, is collaborative and takes into account all the market proposals
, ”assures
Le Figaro
Vinay Goel, Director of Privacy Engineering at Chrome.
Read alsoPub: Google makes new commitments
For several months, the American giant has been trying to convince the most reluctant online advertising players to adopt its alternative to the end of third-party cookies, which it calls Privacy Sandbox.
A new technology supposed to let advertisers collect information about their users, while being more respectful of their privacy.
It must make it possible to continue the distribution of targeted advertisements but with less intrusive techniques.
After receiving the first feedback from the market, Google finally decided at the start of 2022 to radically change its Internet user targeting strategy. “
We are replacing Floc, the old Privacy Sandbox database, with a new database called Topics
,” Vinay Goel announced on Tuesday, January 25.
While Floc intended to group users into anonymized cohorts, i.e. groups made up of several thousand Internet users who share a similar profile according to their centers of interest, Topics (Themes) will instead study the behavior of person-to
-person
users
on the Internet.
This data will not leave the Internet user's computer or smartphone, and the latter will keep control of what is shared with site editors.
Navigation history
In detail, the browser will identify themes representative of users' main interests for a given week, such as "
sport
" or "
travel
", based on their browsing history.
“These themes are kept in memory for only three weeks before being deleted.
This process happens entirely on the device used, without involving external servers, including Google servers,”
says the Mountain View firm.
When an Internet user visits a website participating in the Privacy Sandbox project, Topics will then select three themes, which the API (connection gateways) will then transmit to this same site as well as to its partner advertisers.
“
The list of relevant topics will be drawn up by humans, not by machines,”
explains Vinay Goel.
We want to make sure that our Topics tool will not provide user information to sites that did not receive it before
”.
On the Chrome browser, Google will provide Internet users with control settings allowing them to see shared themes, delete those they do not like, but also completely disable the functionality.
A
"more transparent approach for publishers and for users
," says Google.
An avalanche of procedures
Since the announcement of the development of the Privacy Sandbox two years ago, online advertising players have never hidden their fears.
They are suspicious of Google's real intentions, believing that this shake-up in online advertising targeting will only strengthen its dominant position in the sector.
In January 2021, the British regulator was the first to open an official investigation into Google's initiative.
To prove its good faith and avoid antitrust sanctions, the group took a salvo of global commitments six months later with the CMA.
“We are still awaiting a return from the authority that must judge our concessions,
specifies the director of privacy engineering at Chrome.
We of course informed him of our change of strategy with Topics.
In detail, the American giant had undertaken to appoint an independent administrator, who will have
“the means and the technical expertise necessary to ensure the conformity of the project”
.
Google also promised to implement a more
"transparent"
process to take into account market feedback around the development of its technology products.
Above all, the Mountain View company had undertaken not to use the data they possess on users for the targeting and measurement of advertisements on websites not belonging to Google.
Complaints to Brussels
A year after the opening of this first investigation on the European continent, Google is facing a new complaint, filed on January 24 by major German press publishers, such as Axel Springer (Bild, Politico), and advertisers from the country.
“Publishers must remain in a position where they are allowed to ask their users for consent to process data, without Google capturing that decision. Google must respect the relationship between publishers and users without interfering
,” says the document sent to Brussels.
The plaintiffs believe that the American giant violated European law by unilaterally deciding to abandon third-party cookies on its browser, and are asking Brussels to open an official investigation. The European policeman had looked into the file unofficially at the end of September, after the filing of a complaint by Movement for an Open Web (MOW), a coalition of technology, advertising and publishing companies.
“
User expectations around privacy have changed and continue to evolve, we believe we need to accept this reality and adapt.
The aim is in particular to preserve the economic model of targeted advertising
, ”replies Vinay Goel.
Now, he now hopes that Google's new strategy around the Privacy Sandbox will receive favor from the market...
