Google Plows Ahead With Plan to Stop Selling Ads Tracking Users

(Bloomberg) -- Google says it’s refusing to ditch planned changes to its cookie policy that attracted regulatory scrutiny and a wave of opposition from ad-tech companies and publishers.

The Alphabet Inc. unit upended the advertising industry with its decision last year to phase out third-party cookies that help advertisers pinpoint customers with ads for websites they previously visited and monitor which ads convinced them to buy.

“We’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products,” David Temkin, Google’s director of product management, ads privacy and user trust, said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Google said last year that its so-called privacy sandbox initiative aims to tackle concerns people have about privacy and how their personal identity is used.

But publishers and advertisers complained that tighter data restrictions would make it harder for them to generate ad revenue. The European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority are looking at the matter.

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