Apps

Google flips the switch on interest-based ads with ‘Privacy Sandbox’ rollout

Comment

Google Chrome logo
Image Credits: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek / Getty Images

Google is now rolling out Privacy Sandbox — its tech to replace third-party cookies — to all Chrome users. The company is touting this as a more privacy-forward feature, which tracks topics of interest based on your browsing habits. Advertisers can then use this data to show you relevant ads.

The company has been showing a new popup about Privacy Sandbox to users over the last few days. Users have complained about the pop-up not providing enough information about the cookie replacement tech and how the company will generate topics of interest based on browsing data if you click on “Got it.” Investor Paul Graham even labeled this pop-up as “spyware.”

As a part of the rollout, users will also get access to some controls for ads. If you have clicked on “Got it” when you saw the pop-up, the privacy sandbox experience will be enabled by default. You will have to head to Settings> Privacy and Security > Ad Privacy > Ad topics to turn it off. This will just stop advertisers from showing you targeted ads based on topics of interest.

The Ad Topics tab also lets users look at the topics generated by Chrome’s system and block any that they deem irrelevant.

Google Chrome is a dominant web browser in the market with more than 60% market share, according to StatCounter. However, it has been the last in line to disable third-party cookies as rivals, such as Safari and Firefox, have been blocking third-party cookies for a while now.

Chrome’s plan for phasing out cookies has faced several delays as the company wanted to roll out its alternative for targeted ads before blocking third-party cookies. In May, the company said it would turn off third-party cookies for all users by default in the second half of 2024. Google also mentioned at that time it will begin this rollout with 1% of users in Q1 2024.

Given that Chrome is such a big driver for web traffic, advertisers and developers are worried about the implications of adopting the new solution. For developers who want to test the new Privacy Sandbox environment, the company made the API public in July. The company has the intention of rolling out a simulation environment for developers to adjust to a cookie-less future. While advertisers have been toying with alternative methods to cookies, in markets like India, they are still spending a ton of money on the outgoing solution, according to Insider Intelligence.

While Google has lobbied that its solution brings an end to fallbacks of third-party cookies, entities such as the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) have raised concerns regarding the search giant’s implementation. They have said that because of Chromium-only support for the Topics API, sites could block users or limit the experience for folks using other browsers.

Marketing advocacy group Movement for the Open Web wrote a blog earlier this week saying that Google is gathering a lot of personal data through the Privacy Sandbox “sourced through an opt-in process that it’s hard for most web users to avoid.”

More TechCrunch

Line Man Wongnai, an on-demand food delivery service in Thailand, is considering an initial public offering on a Thai exchange or the U.S. in 2025.

Thai food delivery app Line Man Wongnai weighs IPO in Thailand, US in 2025

The problem is not the media, but the message.

Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is disgusting

Ever wonder why conversational AI like ChatGPT says “Sorry, I can’t do that” or some other polite refusal? OpenAI is offering a limited look at the reasoning behind its own…

OpenAI offers a peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions

The federal government agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks is alerting thousands of filers whose private addresses were exposed following a second data spill in as many years. The…

US Patent and Trademark Office confirms another leak of filers’ address data

As part of an investigation into people involved in the pro-independence movement in Catalonia, the Spanish police obtained information from the encrypted services Wire and Proton, which helped the authorities…

Encrypted services Apple, Proton and Wire helped Spanish police identify activist

Match Group, the company that owns several dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge, released its first-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, which shows that Tinder’s paying user base has decreased for…

Match looks to Hinge as Tinder fails

Private social networking is making a comeback. Gratitude Plus, a startup that aims to shift social media in a more positive direction, is expanding its wellness-focused, personal reflections journal to…

Gratitude Plus makes social networking positive, private and personal

With venture totals slipping year-over-year in key markets like the United States, and concern that venture firms themselves are struggling to raise more capital, founders might be worried. After all,…

Can AI help founders fundraise more quickly and easily?

Google has found a way to bring a variation of its clever “Circle to Search” gesture to iPhone users. The new interaction, launched in January, allows Android users to search…

Google brings a variation on ‘Circle to Search’ to iPhone users

A new sculpture going live on Wednesday in the Flatiron South Public Plaza in New York is not your typical artwork. It combines technology, sociology, anthropology and art to let…

Always-on video portal lets people in NYC and Dublin interact in real time

Apple’s iPad event had a lot to like. New iPads with new chips and new sizes, a new Apple Pencil, and even some software updates. If you are a big…

TechCrunch Minute: When did iPads get as expensive as MacBooks?

Autonomous, AI-based players are coming to a gaming experience near you, and a new startup, Altera, is joining the fray to build this new guard of AI agents. The company announced…

Bye-bye bots: Altera’s game-playing AI agents get backing from Eric Schmidt

Google DeepMind has taken the wraps off a new version of AlphaFold, their transformative machine learning model that predicts the shape and behavior of proteins. AlphaFold 3 is not only…

Google DeepMind debuts huge AlphaFold update and free proteomics-as-a-service web app

Uber plans to deliver more perks to Uber One members, like member-exclusive events, in a bid to gain more revenue through subscriptions.  “You will see more member-exclusives coming up where…

Uber promises member exclusives as Uber One passes $1B run-rate

We’ve all seen them. The inspector with a clipboard, walking around a building, ticking off the last time the fire extinguishers were checked, or if all the lights are working.…

Checkfirst raises $1.5M pre-seed to apply AI to remote inspections and audits

Close to a decade ago, brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira co-founded a company, Replay, that created a video format for 360-degree replays — the sorts of replays that have become…

Controversial drone company Xtend leans into defense with new $40 million round

Usually, when something starts to rot, it gets pitched in the trash. But Joanne Rodriguez wants to turn the concept of rot on its head by growing fungus on trash…

Mycocycle uses mushrooms to upcycle old tires and construction waste

Monzo has raised another £150 million ($190 million), as the challenger bank looks to expand its presence internationally — particularly in the U.S. The new round comes just two months…

UK challenger bank Monzo nabs another $190M as US expansion beckons

iRobot has announced the successor to longtime CEO, Colin Angle. Gary Cohen, who previous held chief executive role at Timex and Qualitor Automotive, will be heading up the company, marking a major…

iRobot names former Timex head Gary Cohen as CEO

Reddit — now a publicly-traded company with more scrutiny on revenue growth — is putting a big focus on boosting its international audience, starting with francophones. In their first-ever earnings…

Reddit tests automatic, whole-site translation into French using LLM-based AI

Mushrooms continue to be a big area for alternative proteins. Canada-based Maia Farms recently raised $1.7 million to develop a blend of mushroom and plant-based protein using biomass fermentation. There’s…

Meati Foods bites into another $100M amid growth to 7,000 retail locations

Cleaning the outside of buildings is a dirty job, and it’s also dangerous. Lucid Bots came on the scene in 2018 with its Sherpa line of drones to clean windows…

Lucid Bots secures $9M for drones to clean more than your windows

High interest rates and financial pressures make it more important than ever for finance teams to have a better handle on their cash flow, and several startups are hoping to…

Israeli startup Panax raises a $10M Series A for its AI-driven cash flow management platform

The European Union has deepened the investigation of Elon Musk-owned social network, X, that it opened back in December under the bloc’s online governance and content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act…

EU grills Elon Musk’s X about content moderation and deepfake risks

For the founders of Atlan, a data governance startup, data has always been at the heart of what they do, even before they launched the company. In fact, co-founders Prukalpa…

Atlan scores $105M for its data control plane, as LLMs boost importance of data

It is estimated that about 2 billion people, especially those in lower and middle-income countries, lack access to quality and affordable essential medicines. The situation is exacerbated by low-quality or even killer…

Axmed raises $2M from Founderful to streamline drug supply chains in underserved markets

For decades, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has maintained a de facto monopoly on positioning, navigation and timing, because it’s cheap and already integrated into billions of devices around the…

Xona Space Systems closes $19M Series A to build out ultra-accurate GPS alternative

Bankruptcy lawyers representing customers impacted by the dramatic crash of cryptocurrency exchange FTX 17 months ago say that the vast majority of victims will receive their money back — plus interest. The…

FTX crypto fraud victims to get their money back — plus interest

On Wednesday, Google launched its digital wallet in India with local integrations, nearly two years after the app was relaunched as a digital wallet platform in the U.S. As TechCrunch exclusively reported last month,…

Google Wallet is now available in India

Bluesky has launched a new product roadmap for the coming months. The decentralized social network said on Tuesday that it is planning to introduce direct messages, support for videos, improved…

Bluesky to add DMs, video support and in-app custom feed curation