Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome
Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the “Privacy Sandbox,” is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven’t been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it’s built directly into the Chrome browser. It’s been in the news previously as “FLoC” and then the “Topics API,” and despite widespread opposition from just about every non-advertiser in the world, Google owns Chrome and is one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, so this is being railroaded into the production builds.
Use Firefox.
This is a response to the laws that eliminate or severely limit third party tracking cookies. Since Google makes so much money on advertising, it had to figure out other ways to get your data. It’s already been tracking people who use the web while logged into Google, but now they’re baking it into Chrome.
As someone who works in advertising, the reason I new use Firefox is because I heard the industry rumblings about this for the last 3 years. It’s finally here, so if you care about making it harder to be tracked/advertised to, switch to Firefox.