Google today announced a major new initiative around its Chrome browser that will, in the long run, introduce significant changes to how Chrome handles cookies and enhance its users’ privacy across the web.
Google is also pushing back against non-cookie tracking techniques like browser fingerprinting, reducing the amount of passive information Chrome provides to sites and taking new steps to fight active fingerprinting techniques.
“Our experience shows that people prefer ads that are personalized to their needs and interests,” Google engineering VP Prabhakar Raghavan said in a blog post explaining the shift, “but only if those ads offer transparency, choice, and control.”
Google also released some new transparency tools, designed to work alongside existing features like Ad Settings and Mute This Ad. A new open-source browser extension will inform users of the various intermediaries that were involved in serving and targeting a given Google ad. Google will make the extension available for various browsers and, through an open API system, encourage other ad networks to support the system.
