There are increasing efforts to keep the Internet safe, including numerous advances towards improving user privacy. Although luckily, this battle will not depend only on us, having confirmed Google its plans to extend its Privacy Sandbox project to Android.
This was announced by Anthony Chavez himself, vice president of product management for Android security and privacy, who assures that the initiative will be considered as a multi-year project to promote advertising services that preserve privacy.
Launched in 2019, this sandbox consists of a set of technical proposals to remake web advertising without third-party cookies that compromise privacy. A project that began to take shape a year after Google undertook Project Strobe, a rethink of Google account and Android data access in the wake of ongoing security and privacy issues.
This is an online movement that Apple started with last year, by which it began requiring applications to request its permission before tracking user activity in applications and on the web. Thus, Privacy Sandbox aims to reduce the tracking of ads on users, while providing advertisers with the ability to send ads to specific audiences and interests, and to know if the ads were seen and were effective, in a way that complies with current privacy regimes such as Europe’s GDPR.
Google eventually hopes that its suite of technologies, including Topics , FLEDGE and FLoC , will allow third-party cookies to be phased out. Their main hurdle at the moment is advertising companies that prefer the not-so-private status quo: these companies are trying to convince regulators to keep web cookies alive. And it is that some companies like Facebook (now Meta), which generate millions in annual revenue through this type of targeted advertising.
Similarly, Google has promised not to give preferential treatment to its own advertising products or sites, even inviting regulators and other companies such as Snap, Rovio or Duolingo to collaborate with the development of this sandbox.
However, at the moment there is no implementation date, in fact relegating the implementation of this project to the not too near future. And it is that Google would still have to design, build and fully test the Privacy Sandbox on Android, having also announced that it will continue to use its existing advertising platform for at least the next two years. That said, the company has assured that it plans to launch a small beta for developers at the end of this same 2022.