Google has announced that it will put Privacy Sandbox into beta across Android 13 systems starting in early 2023, which will include limits on the apps’ capabilities. User data tracking (Opens in a new tab) for advertising purposes.
Sandboxing seeks to keep user data available to advertisers, while respecting the individual Total (Opens in a new tab). Maybe Google will finally take a leaf out of Apple’s book and write it down consumer demand for it (Opens in a new tab).
With Google in development since February of this year, it has been working with app developers and marketing professionals on the Privacy Sandbox and is now ready to go live.
New APIs
As is common with Android software updates, Sandbox will be available to a select few devices initially, before it’s released to the wider Android market.
App developers will be able to access preview builds to test them and provide feedback on the latest features. A closed beta version of the runtime SDK will also be available, which will exclude apps from using ad-related code, so no marketing data will be available for apps.
Currently, Android applications (Opens in a new tab) Use secret tracking methods. However, with the new Privacy Sandbox, many APIs will replace these.
For example, the Attribution Reporting API removes cross-party user identifiers. , through the use of obfuscation techniques and limiting the amount of data available for reports.
Another is the Topics API, which allows personalized interest-based advertising to work without tracking multiple apps that individuals use.
There’s also a Fledge API, which limits the sharing of identifiers and app usage information when advertisers attempt to remarket to those who have shown potential interest in their products, such as when they leave an item in their checkout basket.
These APIs are set to replace advertising identifiers, which uniquely identify individual users and have long been a staple of Android devices.
Despite this, Privacy Sandbox has already been met with some backlash. Two privacy-focused internet companies, DuckDuckGo and Brave, have reservations about Google’s plans.
The former believes that those New APIs will continue to track user data (Opens in a new tab)only indirectly, and the latter believes that the plans will actually harm web privacy, and increase Google’s control over the web.
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