Complete Details of Google’s Privacy Sandbox

Introduction of Google’s Privacy Sandbox

If you are searching about Sandbox privacy then surely you will be familiar with third-party cookies. There are several roles of third-party cookies. These cookies are widely used to anonymously track users, targeting audience in advertising campaigns, etc.

Now, Google Chrome is going to phase out third-party cookies in 2022. According to December 2020 research, Chrome has 66% of the desktop user market share. What will happen when Chrome will phase out third-party cookies? Let’s see all these points in details.

What is Google Privacy Sandbox?

Google Privacy Sandbox is an alternative to third-party cookies that will be supported by Chrome browser from 2022 after the phase-out of third-party cookies.

Google now wants to create a new standard of anonymous users tracking, ad targeting and fraud prevention and for this purpose, they are introducing Google Privacy Sandbox. It contains five APIs that will help to gather analytics as well as advertising.

Role of Third-Party Cookies

There are two types of cookies:

• First-Party Cookies – Cookies generated by the domain.
• Third-Party Cookies – Cookies that are generated by the services installed on the site such as cookies of Google AdSense that will be active if the site is using AdSense for displaying ads.

As there are lots of additional services that we use on-site and almost all of them track users in one or another way so, cookies are used for this purpose. Third-party cookies help us to gather analytics as well as ads targeting. From this point of view, third-party cookies are very helpful. If they are highly useful then why Google is going to end them?

Why is Google Chrome Phasing out Third-Party Cookies?

No doubt third-party cookies very help but they also have serious security & privacy risks. Unethical practices such as cross-site scripting are harmful to users and may lead to serious privacy issues.

Many sites gather users information without letting them know. Although, now it is a law in the US & UK but, the young website may practising it unless they are not being noticed and reported.

Another reason is that many browsers such as DuckDuckGo blocks third-party cookies and attracting users by offering them an environment without tracking to increase their market share. If it keeps going them no one will like cookies supported browsers.

How Google Privacy Sandbox Works?

Based on the information provided by the company, Google Privacy Sandbox will be passed on APIs. Here are the details of APIs that will include:

• Trust Human API (Trust API)– As known as an alternative to CAPTCHA. This API will identify that either the user is a human or a bot. It will ask to fill a form for verification.
• Aggregated Reporting API (conversion measurement API alternative) – This API will provide information about the site users and tell about impressions, clicks as well as conversation rate.
• Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) – This API will see the browser history of the user and group them based on interest (by using the history of users).
• Privacy Budget – This will limit the sites in user data collection so, sites will collect only the important information.
• PIGIN (Turtle Dove/private interest groups) – let each browser track a set of interest groups of user is thought to belong to.
• First Party Sets – By using it site owners can declare all the sites managed by them.

Future of Google Privacy Sandbox

From the users’ point of view, Google Privacy Sandbox is very good because it gives users better privacy. From the publishers’ point of view, they will be now limited in data collection.

The advertising industry still looks confused and we cannot say anything about the time. With Google Privacy Sandbox, individual targeting is not possible. Anyhow, the company claims that the ad spend will be cost-effective.