Google Chrome’s ‘Privacy Sandbox’ Is a Joke, and Users

Google is once again showing that any claim of protecting user privacy is a joke, with the redesigned Chrome “Privacy Sandbox” the latest example.

Google is engaging in a massive redesign of Chrome, coinciding with its 15th birthday. Unfortunately, the company is ramping up Chrome’s privacy-invasive tactics with its “Privacy Sandbox” feature.

According to Ars Technica, Google Chrome will track the pages users visit and share with websites a list of advertising topics likely to appeal to the user.

If that seems like a huge conflict of interest for Google — the maker of Chrome and one of the world’s biggest advertisers — it absolutely is. It’s much like relying on kidnappers to provide private security…against kidnapping.

As Ars points out, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been equally vocal in its condemnation of Google’s antics.

Google’s pitch to privacy advocates is that a world with FLoC (and other elements of the “privacy sandbox”) will be better than the world we have today, where data brokers and ad-tech giants track and profile with impunity. But that framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking.” It’s not either-or. Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads.

Google Chrome may be the most popular browser in the world, but it’s time for that to change. Firefox, Brave, Safari, and Vivaldi all provide far better privacy and are not run by companies that have a fundamental conflict of interest with privacy concerns.