The recent news about Google and its plans to disable third-party cookies in Chrome represents a huge change on the Internet. Although this is good news for those who are annoyed by the constant tracking of their activities, it will have a huge impact on businesses and advertisers.
Cookies are text strands that identify websites that identify the user and provide key data to the site. First-party cookies are essential to maintain the person’s interaction with the site. They identify you and keep your session active. Third-party cookies also identify you, but can be read by other websites to read, track and analyze your activities and interests. For some, they enable customized and personalized experiences and offers. For others, they represent an invasion of privacy as they track visitors from site to site and display ads that reflect their website history.
A whole subset of ad networks has emerged that uses these third-party cookies to serve ads from networks that target users on a wide range of websites.
Apple’s Safari has already started blocking all third-party cookies by default in March 2020. Three months later, Apple also announced new guidelines for app tracking for iOS 14.
Google’s announcement to eliminate third-party cookies posed a second major threat to this entire ecosystem.
Google had begun studies for an approach called Federated Learning of Cohorts, which groups users according to their web history. Other bodies and groups believe that this gives Google too much power and support different approaches. At this point, no clear consensus on a new standard is certain.
For more information, read the <a href=”https://www.engadget.com/third-party-cookies-privacy-ad-tracking-data-floc-swan-explainer-163050682.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>original story</a> in Engadget