A cookie alternative: The utilise of browser cookies is a controversial exercise, just a necessary one for many sites throughout the internet. All the same, Google is looking into ane culling that requires less personal user data while nonetheless holding meaning promise for advertisers -- an API called "Federated Learning of Cohorts."

The goal of FLoC, in Google's eyes, is to deliver advertising results "nigh as effective" every bit cookie-based approaches past group large groups of users into clusters called "cohorts." These cohorts will organize people into ad groups based on interests they share.

Ideally, this would lead to less of your specific tastes and interests being shared with information companies -- instead, you're merely some other fish in the sea. That'due south possibly not a flattering comparison, but when information technology comes to web privacy, it's far amend than the alternative.

Google does acknowledge that users could have their cohort recorded and revealed if a site has gained plenty personally-identifiable information most them, merely without admission to something like your IP address, it ideally won't exist enough to individually identify someone.

Even in cases where information technology might, Google hopes to implement a few pattern mitigations to obfuscate the exercise, such every bit ensuring accomplice sizes are "big enough that they are not useful for tracking."

Y'all tin read a total breakdown of how FLoC will work on its dedicated GitHub page here. Any you might call back of Google, it'south clear that the intentions, if zip else, behind this project are good -- or, at least, much better than what we accept now.

Hopefully, the FLoC standard will be adopted by most of the advertising community. If it is, browser makers tin begin phasing out third-political party cookies entirely.