Google Chrome's privacy changes will hit the web later in 2020

Google's Chrome team, advancing its web privacy effort, later in 2020 will begin testing the "privacy sandbox" proposals it unveiled in 2019. The Chrome tests are part of an effort to make it harder for publishers, advertisers and data brokers to harvest your personal data without your permission and to track you online. Other browsers, including Apple's Safari, Brave Software's Brave, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's new Chromium-based Edge, have pushed steadily to cut tracking for the last few years. Google's privacy sandbox plan came later in the process, but carries enormous importance given that Chrome dominates browser usage, accounting for 64% of web activity.

Google's announcement effectively puts websites on notice: The most-used browser is going to start changing the way the web works, so you'd better prepare. If Google's changes materialize as planned, "the web becomes inherently privacy preserving," said Justin Schuh, a director of Chrome engineering. "The concrete difference is you don't have people collecting this information on you, building profiles without your consent." Although Chrome's browser rivals and other critics have taken issue with some of Chrome's privacy sandbox ideas, it's clear the overall attitude among browser makers has shifted toward protecting your personal information.

For browser makers, it's now a matter of figuring out the best way to protect your data. Chrome's privacy sandbox includes an upper limit on the data a website can harvest, called a "privacy budget;" a "trust token" that can help websites separate you from bots, spammers and untrustworthy actors without having to track you personally; tools to group people by their interests but without invading privacy; and a way for websites to communicate without knowing your internet address. In Chrome's case, Google also needs to figure out how to protect the data without damaging its online business, which relies on ads.