According to The Verge, Google plans to add third-party cookie tracking to Chrome.
In theory, this should make life harder for advertisers using third-party cookies to track users and customize targeting. A similar feature is already available in Safari and Firefox.
Blocking third-party cookies means that sites can only use cookies that are directly linked to them. And these cookies will not be used for tracking, but for their original purpose (for example, to check if users are logged in under their account).
As an alternative, Google wants to offer resource owners a system called FLOC. It is a mechanism for bringing users together into cohorts – anonymous groups of people with similar habits that advertisers can target.
Cohorts will be created by the browser based on the history and habits of each user, but they will all be collected into a single group and mixed, so it will not be possible to identify the history of visits of a particular person among the received data, it will remain confidential. The browser will only define users into cohorts and act as an independent intermediary between advertisers and consumers.
For sites, it will look like this: a person visits the page, and the resource receives a signal in the spirit of “the client belongs to the 195680 group” and will be able to show an advertisement prepared for this group.
How much this will increase privacy is not yet known. Some experts are confused because FLOC will automatically group people and can create categories of users that are grouped into very specific cohorts, revealing important personal details of a specific group of people (for example, victims of violence). Google has promised to identify such cohorts and hide them from advertisers.
The function is currently under testing.