The Privacy Sandbox initiative announced by Google calls on all players in the online world to build a new World Wide Web.

Ensure adequate privacy protection for users while allowing publishers to work with advertisers to fund their business. Possible? Yes, according to Google, which to achieve the goal announces an initiative called Privacy Sandbox. The intent is to act on two fronts: by itself making changes to Chrome and side by side with the other players in the online world to define new shared standards.

Privacy is a priority for us in everything we do. So today we announce a new initiative to develop a set of open standards that will fundamentally improve web privacy. We called it Privacy Sandbox.

Google announces Privacy Sandbox

According to the Mountain View group, browsers that completely block cookies are not the best solution. In doing so, the dynamic that governs the delivery of targeted advertising campaigns on the Web is affected, with repercussions on the business of those who create and publish resources. As a result, over the long term, those same users who have implemented the practice will see themselves unable to access punctual and quality content.

Failure to create cookies has also led developers and webmasters to look for alternatives and workarounds to identify those who visit their pages or connect to their platforms, sometimes going the way of fingerprinting. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the reading of fingerprints: it is a collection of information such as the type of device used during navigation, the screen resolution and even the installed fonts so as to obtain a sort of unique imprint of the user, which in contrast to what happens with cookies can in no way be controlled or eliminated.

Google therefore proposes to follow the path of open standards, calling the other software houses involved in browser development, publishers and advertisers. Among the objectives there is also the definition of a method that will allow users to keep the information concerning them locally, while providing online services with some data in aggregate form necessary to deliver advertising in line with their preferences.

At the moment it is all very theoretical and impractical. The success of Privacy Sandbox will depend above all on the willingness to collaborate on the part of the realities called by the bigG appeal, which on the blog dedicated to the Chromium project anticipates some of the points on which it believes it is necessary to intervene.

• Clarify the world in which user information is processed in the advertising circuits;
• provide listings of the same type to groups of users with similar interests instead of a single person;
• in an equivalent way, measure the effectiveness of the campaigns by analyzing data on whole groups and not specific individuals;
• offer both publishers and advertisers the tools necessary to prevent fraud and, more generally, malicious behavior;
• counter the fingerprinting phenomenon.