Won't develop new ways to track users' activity on Chrome browser: Google

It a bid to create a privacy-first web experience for billions of its users, Google has explicitly said that once third-party cookies are phased out from its platforms, it will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will use them in its products.

Google Chrome last year announced its intent to remove support for third-party cookies.

"We continue to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers," said David Temkin, Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust at Google.

Third-party cookies have been blocked in Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox and Google aims to do the same in Chrome. The cookies allow advertisers to track you as you move between various websites.

Google said on Wednesday that advertisers don't need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising.

"Our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers," Temkin emphasised.

Nearly 72 per cent people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81 per cent say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits, according to a study by Pew Research Center.

Google said that Chrome will offer the first iteration of new privacy-first user controls in April and will expand on these controls in future updates.

The company said that it will continue to support first-party relationships on its ad platforms for partners, in which they have direct connections with their own customers.

"We'll deepen our support for solutions that build on these direct relationships between consumers and the brands and publishers they engage with".

--IANS

na/in