Google has recently been granted a patent for a new API that will allow the company to authorize data transmission within a network without the utilization of cookies.
Now, this isn’t necessarily surprising or shocking news. In fact, tech enthusiasts paying attention across 2021 will even have encountered the occasional article about Google’s plans for rolling back on cookie usage, abandoning the practice entirely. Those articles probably won’t have spoken favorably of the decision either, however, since while cookies are annoying at best and harmful at worst, the alternative isn’t much better. The tech giant’s replacement for cookies was the widely criticized FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). In a very quick summary of what this new addition to the Chrome browser is, FLoC took the tracking information that cookies harvest for third party advertisers, and just gave it to Google directly in exchange. Users who want their privacy weren’t happy with this, third party companies that heavily utilized Google as a form of advertisement weren’t happy about this, and the company shifted its cookie ban to 2023 instead. This new update, however, shows that the company has far from forgotten its original goals.
What this newly patented technology does is allow the Chrome browser to more effectively register content that a user interacts with on a website. Essentially, all content interacted with is stored by the Chrome browser, and is information that can later be utilized by Google for whatever demographics or targeted content the company itself generated. However, any and all forms of storage take up bandwidth and computational capacity. In layman terms, the more content one encounters, the slower Chrome will start acting. Google’s flagship browser got to where it is today by being the exact opposite of slow; it’s efficiency is what ultimately led to the doom of lesser browsers such as Microsoft Explorer. Slowing or lagging in the interest of gaining personal user information might not be the best idea.
The new API can reduce the transmission of information from the landing website by essentially filtering out or ignoring transmission that don’t result in content. The API also allows websites to transmit data in the form of smaller packages, which helps save up on bandwidth and computational resources, keeping Chrome fast as ever. Which is great and all, once we get over the fact that all this means is that Google’s siphoning personal user data with more efficiency than ever.
Read next: Data Reveals Google Search’s Stranglehold On The Search Engine Marketplace
Now, this isn’t necessarily surprising or shocking news. In fact, tech enthusiasts paying attention across 2021 will even have encountered the occasional article about Google’s plans for rolling back on cookie usage, abandoning the practice entirely. Those articles probably won’t have spoken favorably of the decision either, however, since while cookies are annoying at best and harmful at worst, the alternative isn’t much better. The tech giant’s replacement for cookies was the widely criticized FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). In a very quick summary of what this new addition to the Chrome browser is, FLoC took the tracking information that cookies harvest for third party advertisers, and just gave it to Google directly in exchange. Users who want their privacy weren’t happy with this, third party companies that heavily utilized Google as a form of advertisement weren’t happy about this, and the company shifted its cookie ban to 2023 instead. This new update, however, shows that the company has far from forgotten its original goals.
What this newly patented technology does is allow the Chrome browser to more effectively register content that a user interacts with on a website. Essentially, all content interacted with is stored by the Chrome browser, and is information that can later be utilized by Google for whatever demographics or targeted content the company itself generated. However, any and all forms of storage take up bandwidth and computational capacity. In layman terms, the more content one encounters, the slower Chrome will start acting. Google’s flagship browser got to where it is today by being the exact opposite of slow; it’s efficiency is what ultimately led to the doom of lesser browsers such as Microsoft Explorer. Slowing or lagging in the interest of gaining personal user information might not be the best idea.
The new API can reduce the transmission of information from the landing website by essentially filtering out or ignoring transmission that don’t result in content. The API also allows websites to transmit data in the form of smaller packages, which helps save up on bandwidth and computational resources, keeping Chrome fast as ever. Which is great and all, once we get over the fact that all this means is that Google’s siphoning personal user data with more efficiency than ever.
Read next: Data Reveals Google Search’s Stranglehold On The Search Engine Marketplace