Google has announced its plans to change how it tracks individuals online when using Chrome browsers.

Google stated last year that it would get rid of third-party cookies, which are used to enable online ads as they work across any website, not just the one you are currently on. Google in a recent post said that no similar replacement identifiers will be built to track individuals as they browse the web, nor will such be used in Google products. Google will instead by utilise APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which allow different applications to talk to each other whilst preserving privacy.

Google claims that this new approach will better preserve privacy, and that it is aiming for a balance between advertising and monetisation but with a private and secure experience. Whilst this may seem like a big win for individual privacy online, this may only serve to tighten Google’s control of the search industry – as this new approach will put the interpretation of this new tracking methodology entirely in Google’s hands.

Privacy advocates also warn that very specific targeted advertising will still happen, simply in a different way under a different name. The new approach will group individuals into cohorts for profiling and targeting, and if these groups are granular enough then individuals will still ultimately have the same level of targeting applied to them. A further complication could be that the level of automation in these new systems could mean that behaviours are incorrectly applied to individuals – for example, will sensitive attributes such as race or disability be considered?

A huge amount is spent and earned across the advertising market. In the fourth quarter of last year Google reported an increase of 22% in advertising revenue to $46.2 billion compared with a year earlier. Google also accounted for 52% of last year’s global digital ad spending of $292 billion.