Google parent Alphabet Inc. said Wednesday that it wouldn’t develop new advertising tools that track users across their web browsing, as the company instead focuses on “privacy-preserving” ad products that it says are in line with modern user expectations for internet usage.
“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,” the company said in a Wednesday morning blog post.
Alphabet’s
GOOG,
-0.45%
GOOGL,
-0.48%
Google said a year ago that it planned to phase out support for third-party cookies given a growing privacy consciousness among users. Regulators have shown concern over tracking policies, but Google’s new plans to replace cookies have also sparked pushback.
The company plans to run its web products with “privacy-preserving APIs,” referring to application-programming interfaces, which the company said would respect user privacy “while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.”
“We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII [personally identifiable information] graphs based on people’s email addresses,” Google said in the Wednesday blog post. “We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long-term investment.”
Opinion: Apple’s privacy changes are affecting more than just Facebook
Alphabet shares are little changed in Wednesday morning trading. They’ve gained 13% over the past three months as the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.10%
has risen 5%.
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