The goal for the web giant is to find a new balance between the growing demand for privacy demanded by users and regulators and the need to allow advertisers to fine-tune their ads on a large scale, bringing in billions of dollars.

The company, a subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to take its time and already warns that it will take several years.

On its blog on Wednesday, Google recalls that if 90% of the applications offered on its Google Play platform are free, it is largely thanks to advertisements.

The Facebook social network, for example, uses sophisticated tools to study the behavior of members of its network on the Internet and then suggest that advertisers specifically target the profiles most likely to be interested.

But "the industry must continue to evolve the way digital advertising works to improve user privacy," Google acknowledges.

Apple has already embarked on this path for all devices running its iOS system, forcing mobile application publishers to ask their users if they want to be tracked once they exit the application.

This change was justified by the respect of data confidentiality.

But it does not prevent the company itself from collecting information, and clearly harms companies like Facebook or Google which can no longer sell advertisements as well targeted as before.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, already estimates the new rule will cost it $10 billion in lost revenue this year.

Collaboration

For its new system, Google claims to want to improve respect for the privacy of users "without jeopardizing free access to content and services".

“Other platforms have taken a different approach to ad privacy, sharply limiting the technologies used by developers and advertisers,” Google points out in a hint to Apple.

But this approach "is not effective" and "can lead to an even worse situation for user privacy and developer business," the company said.

The Android stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​Spain, February 25, 2019 GABRIEL BOUYS AFP/Archives

The group says it wants to work with developers and says it will continue to offer the advertising tools currently on its platform "for at least two years", the time to design, build and test the new tools.

He also promises to consult regulators and regularly share the progress of his work.

Google wants to find ways to limit data sharing with third parties and eliminate tools that track users as they move between apps, including those for advertising.

The company also says it wants to "explore technologies that reduce the possibility of secretly collecting data".

The group's collaborative approach was praised by a Facebook executive, Graham Mudd, who found it "encouraging".

"We look forward to continuing to work with them and the rest of the industry through professional organizations on technologies to improve privacy," he wrote on Twitter.

The overwhelming majority of smartphones and tablets in the world run on the operating systems of Google and Apple, Android (approximately 70% market share) and iOS (approximately 25%).

Google had already announced at the beginning of 2020 that it wanted, within two years, to eliminate "cookies" from websites from its browser, these small electronic identification modules that follow Internet users as they browse the web to better target advertising.

But the group had to push back its schedule in order to better take into account the feedback from the various players in the sector.

He also had to make a commitment to the British competition authority, which feared that Google would strengthen its grip on the market, not to favor its own advertising services when third-party cookies are eliminated.

© 2022 AFP