The company is experimenting with ways to facilitate targeted advertising but block tracking cookies — the little bits of code that follow people around the Internet and let almost anyone amass data on website visitors. The issue gets to the heart of a major question facing tech companies and societies as a whole — is more privacy still good if it cements the dominance of a handful of corporate giants?
Apple is taking this route, too, cutting down on the ability of app developers to collect data on their users if they’re on iPhones. Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is still used by millions of people, has also cut down on tracking cookies. But smaller companies that rely on ads say this path will lead to Big Tech knowing more about its users, while freezing out all possible future competitors from accessing the data that fuels the Internet economy.
Privacy advocates say this is a false choice. The European Commission agrees, saying that “competition law and data protection laws must work hand in hand to ensure that display advertising markets operate on a level playing field in which all market participants protect user privacy in the same manner.”
