Google Chrome is built on an open source project, and so FLoC was implemented as part of that project that other browsers could include. It’s more private than cookies, but it’s also complicated and has some potential privacy implications of its own if it’s not implemented right. It uses an algorithm to look at your browser history and place you in a group of people with similar browsing histories so that advertisers can target you.
Every major browser that uses the open source Chromium project has declined to use it, and it’s unclear what that will mean for the future of advertising on the web.Ī couple of weeks ago, Google announced it was beginning to test a new ad technology inside Google Chrome called the Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC. Google is going it alone with its proposed advertising technology to replace third-party cookies.
