 | |
| Formation | August 2019 |
|---|---|
| Founder | |
| Type | Initiative |
| Purpose | Development of web standards |
| Website | privacysandbox |
The Privacy Sandbox is an initiative led by Google to create web standards for websites to access user information without compromising privacy.[1] Its core purpose is to facilitate online advertising by sharing a subset of user private information without the use of third-party cookies.[2]: 39 The initiative includes a number of proposals, many of these proposals have bird-themed names which are changed once the corresponding feature reaches general availability.[3] The technology include Topics API (formerly Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC),[4] Protected Audience, Attribution Reporting, Private Aggregation, Shared Storage and Fenced Frames as well as other proposed technologies.[5] The project was announced in August 2019.[6][7]
On September 7, 2023, Google announced general availability of Privacy Sandbox APIs, naming explicitly Topics, Protected Audience, Attribution Reporting, Private Aggregation, Shared Storage and Fenced Frames, meaning these features were enabled for more than half of Google Chrome users.[8][9] Privacy Sandbox features were also made available on Android around the same time.[10][11]
The initiative has been described as anti-competitive and has generated an antitrust response due to concerns that the introduced proposals limit tracking through traditional methods and push advertisers to use Google as a middleman in order to show advertisements.
- ^ Lardinois, Frederic (August 22, 2019). "Google proposes new privacy and anti-fingerprinting controls for the web". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
- ^ Geradin, Damien; Katsifis, Dimitrios; Karanikioti, Theano (2020-11-25). "Google as a de facto Privacy Regulator: Analyzing Chrome's Removal of Third-party Cookies from an Antitrust Perspective". Tilburg Law and Economics Center (DP2020-038). Rochester, NY. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3738107. ISSN 1572-4042. S2CID 234583355. SSRN 3738107.
- ^ Bohn, Dieter (2021-03-30). "Privacy and ads in Chrome are about to become FLoCing complicated". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
- ^ Nield, David (2021-05-09). "What's Google FLoC? And How Does It Affect Your Privacy?". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ Lardinois, Frederic (2023-07-20). "Google starts the GA rollout of its Privacy Sandbox APIs to all Chrome users". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
- ^ Goodin, Dan (2020-01-15). "Google plans to drop Chrome support for tracking cookies by 2022". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
- ^ Cyphers, Bennett (2019-08-30). "Don't Play in Google's Privacy Sandbox". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ "Privacy Sandbox for the Web reaches general availability - The Privacy Sandbox". privacysandbox.com. Retrieved 2023-09-08.
- ^ Amadeo, Ron (2023-09-07). "Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2023-09-08.
- ^ "Introducing the Privacy Sandbox on Android". Google. 2022-02-16. Retrieved 2022-11-15.
- ^ Vonau, Manuel (2022-11-15). "Google's third-party cookie killer is almost ready for beta testing on Android". Android Police. Retrieved 2022-11-15.