Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge browsers will not be adopting Google FLoC for Chrome. The Verge reports that the companies have confirmed skipping Google’s new technology to replace third-party cookies.
Last month, Google began testing for new Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) as a new standard for the web to replace third-party cookies. But soon it became controversial, and companies like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and others called it “privacy-invasive”. FLoC uses an algorithm to view users’ browser history to categorize users with similar browsing histories for targeted ads. And if not implemented properly, the new tech can have privacy-related issues.
After other companies, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge will not be joining Google FLoC tech
As per the report, Apple has not commented on skipping the tech but Mozilla and Microsoft have expressed no interest in adopting the new FLoC tech at the moment.
We believe in a future where the web can provide people with privacy, transparency and control while also supporting responsible business models to create a vibrant, open and diverse ecosystem. Like Google, we support solutions that give users clear consent, and do not bypass consumer choice. That’s also why we do not support solutions that leverage non-consented user identity signals, such as fingerprinting. The industry is on a journey and there will be browser-based proposals that do not need individual user ids and ID-based proposals that are based on consent and first party relationships. We will continue to explore these approaches with the community. Recently, for example, we were pleased to introduce one possible approach, as described in our PARAKEET proposal. This proposal is not the final iteration but is an evolving document.
In addition, Mozilla said that it is not bringing the FLoC to its users and is reviewing the “privacy-preserving advertising proposals” for Firefox including the new tech.
We are currently evaluating many of the privacy preserving advertising proposals, including those put forward by Google, but have no current plans to implement any of them at this time.
We don’t buy into the assumption that the industry needs billions of data points about people, that are collected and shared without their understanding, to serve relevant advertising. That is why we’ve implemented Enhanced Tracking Protection by default to block more than ten billion trackers a day, and continue to innovate on new ways to protect people who use Firefox.
Advertising and privacy can co-exist. And the advertising industry can operate differently than it has in past years. We look forward to playing a role in finding solutions that build a better web.
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