Google To Stop Using Browsing History To Target Ads: How Will It Make Money?

Google's business model has primarily revolved around targeting ads based on the user's browsing history. Of course, this raised a lot of eyebrows as Google had access to the user's browsing data, history, and other critical data. Looks like this might soon be changing. Google notes it will be bringing out a massive change in its business model soon.

Google To Stop Tracking Browsing History

From the looks of it, Google will stop using the user's browsing history for ad tracking. The update comes from David Temkin, the Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy, and Trust at Google. The blog post notes that Google will eventually stop creating tools that track user data on its products, which would theoretically include Android smartphones as well.

"People shouldn't have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. And advertisers don't need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising," the blog post reads. Further, the new changes will kickstart as early as next month.

How Will Google Make Money Now?

Ads have been one of the primary sources of income for the internet giant, and data mining will likely continue. However, the change in policy means Google won't be targeting specific individuals to get the data. Instead, APIs will come into the picture, where users will be put into specific groups of data pooling, from where Google would see this mixed data to advertisers.

Google further explains this in the blog post with an instance. Let's presume you would like to visit websites with cat painting. Your data here would be pooled with other visitors of such sites, which will then be shared as people who like cat paintings, and also like other sites and products.

Google has provided more information on the white paper on the Federated Learning of Cohorts API (FloC). Google would then begin testing the new policy in Q2 2021 from these APIs. Soon after, Google notes it would bring in new privacy controls within Chrome in April. With mounting pressure from the EU and other nations, the new move aims to win over governments and users.