Google says it will stop collecting individual browsing histories next year
As worries grow louder about personal data breaches and the potential for privacy violations, interest in technologies that can reduce those risks — DID among them — keeps rising, along with the number of places putting them to use. Against that backdrop, Google has announced that from next year it will stop collecting individuals' website browsing histories, and all eyes are on the move.
Some point out that full protection may still be out of reach, since other ways of collecting personal data remain. Even so, Google's step is a clear sign that the IT industry's approach to user tracking is changing.
Because this is an issue that could reshape the entire IT industry, here are the key points of the related article. You can read the full piece at the link at the bottom of this post.
Google: "We will stop tracking individual internet browsing histories starting next year"
Growing interest in privacy taken into account
Other ways of collecting data still remain
Full protection of personal data remains difficult
Alphabet, Google's parent company, said it "plans to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that identify an individual's website browsing history from early 2022," according to Bloomberg and other outlets. Alphabet explained that it reached the decision because people's interest in privacy and in how their personal data is used continues to grow.
Instead, from the second quarter of this year Google plans to keep offering targeted advertising — ads aimed at specific customers — by developing its own program that collects browsing histories by "group" rather than by "individual." Once the new program, called "Privacy Sandbox," is in place, some individual user data will be anonymized, and only "group-level data," bundling together users with similar site-visit patterns, will be passed to Google.
Google's move follows years of class action suits from users claiming that "their personal data was handed to advertisers without consent," and the European Union's tightening of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In January of last year, Google announced it would phase out "cookies," the site-visit tracking technology, from its own web browser, Chrome.
Google's move will bring major change to the digital advertising industry, and it shows that the information technology (IT) industry's approach to user tracking is changing
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
- Source: The Kyunghyang Shinmun
- Original: https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=shm&sid1=105&oid=032&aid=0003062416