Google’s New Cookie Replacement. What does it mean for your online privacy?

For long now, Google has been trying to remove the cookies, the minute files which are stored on our computers as we browse through various websites. These cookies help the advertisers to track us, the potential targeted customers. This week, Google has announced that it is replacing the Federal Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) with a new tool called Topics.

Why do we need tracking?

Tracking is solely for advertising the right content to the right user and increase profitability. Large data-collecting companies like Google and Meta are providing advertisers the relative information about the prospect customers so they can target them in an efficient way. However, people these days are getting uncomfortable with the way they are being tracked and analyzed.

What was FLoC?

Previously, Google’s plan was to protect its users’ privacy by gathering them into groups according to their interests and demographics. However, the privacy specialists were not satisfied with this plan as it was still possible to identify individuals with some loop holes.

The new Tool, Topics

Topics hides our identity and movements from the advertisers in a slightly different way. It includes a code which will monitor the sites users visit and their interests but will store this information for a limited amount of time which is three weeks and categorize the users according to their interests.

The advertisers will be allowed to access only three of the interests and show you advertisements according to them.

Therefore, with Topics, advertisers will not be able to access your personal information which may lead to your identification.

What will happen next?

According to Google, it will end support for third party cookies totally in the middle of 2023. Chrome will provide the users total autonomy to see what they wish, disable what they don’t want to see and even disable the feature completely.