To hear Google tell it, consumer privacy is now so important that it has decimded to stop tracking and targeting individuals across the internet. Examined closely, Google’s announcement does nothing to protect consumers while advancing its campaign of anticompetitive conduct. Google positions its recent efforts as privacy-enhancing so long as we all agree to play in Google’s new Privacy Sandbox called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). No, really, that’s what they are calling it. Let’s start with a plain-English description of this new sandbox, to the extent possible. Google says it will eliminate the use of third-party “cookies” in its Chrome browser. It will replace those “cookies” with a new algorithm that analyzes individual consumer’s types, habits, and preferences and places them into FLoCs, which are groups of individuals which will all receive the same ads. These “cohorts” are individuals that share common characteristics such as college-educated, charcuterie-loving golfers, who frequently visit the Hamptons and shop at Nordstrom. Let’s just say this FLoC won’t get ads for payday loans. Now, even though Google claims it will no longer permit cookies and “will not build alternate identifiers,” it will not apply those new rules to itself. Google will certainly know enough to constantly place individuals into ever-changing groups. On Android devices alone, Google maintains over a dozen unique identifiers. So consumers will be tracked as individuals but marketed to as a group, and as part of multiple different groups. And these groups will change based on the ads being served. Consumers will be dynamically and instantaneously assigned (by algorithm) to different FLoCs based on their profiles and ad content. And as consumers are placed in more and more FLoCs, they rapidly generate a list of FLoCs that uniquely describes…one individual. This is Google’s new Privacy Sandbox. Yes, it’s FLoCed up.
