Google floated a new set of ideas for changing how advertising on the Web should work, scrapping and replacing a previous plan that had triggered anger and concern from privacy advocates and government competition regulators alike. The new system, called Topics, will track users on Google’s Chrome browser and assign them a set of advertising categories, like travel or fitness, based on the sites they visit. When the person goes to a site with ads, three of those topics will be shared with advertisers on the site, allowing them to show a relevant ad. The previous proposed system, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLOC), assigned users to a group of people who Google’s AI determined had the same interests. Privacy advocates argued that the ID number associated with a user’s group could be logged by websites and advertisers and used to build profiles of people. The proposals are part of Google’s master plan to get rid of third-party cookies, the little bits of code that websites drop into people’s browsers that let them follow them around the Web, building detailed profiles of their behavior and continuing to advertise to them long after they leave the site. The system is a minefield for privacy and has spurred many people to download ad blockers. But Google relies on advertising and argues content producers like news organizations and other websites need ads to survive, so it’s been proposing alternatives that try to find a middle path between the current free-for-all situation and a totally private Web.
