Google claims it will stop tracking individual users for ads

Article note: I'm all for reducing the identifier surface in the web, but this definitely has a "we're building the spyware into Chrome because we control the browser" feel to it. That's a game that only Apple, Microsoft, and Google are really able to play.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

As Google's plan to kill third-party tracking cookies ramps up, the company is answering questions about what will replace it. Many people have wondered: if Google kills cookies, won't the company just cook up some other method for individually tracking users?

Today, Google answered that concern in a post on its "Ads & Commerce" blog, pledging it won't come up with "any technology used for tracking individual people." The company wrote:

We continue to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers. Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.

You might look at that statement and think that Google is sacrificing something or turning over a new leaf when it comes to privacy, but really, Google doesn't need to track individuals for advertisements. Google's cookie-tracking replacement technology, the Chrome "Privacy Sandbox," uses group tracking, which is more in line with how advertisers think anyway.