Google on Wednesday announced plans to build a new ad targeting system that will limit sharing with third parties of personal data collected from smartphones and tablets running its Android operating system.
The goal for the web giant is to find a new balance between the increasing demand for confidentiality from users and regulators with the need to allow advertisers to finely segment their advertising on a large scale, reporting to you in the process, billions of dollars.
The company, a subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to take its time and warned from now on that this could take a few years.
In its blog on Wednesday, Google recalled that 90% of the applications offered on its Google Play platform are free, which is largely due to advertising.
The social network Facebook, for example, uses sophisticated tools to study the behavior of the members of its network on the Internet and propose advertisers to specifically target the profiles most likely to be interested.
But “the sector must continue to evolve the operation of digital advertising to improve user confidentiality,” Google acknowledges.
Apple has already committed to this on all devices running its iOS operating system, forcing app creators to ask their users if they want to be tracked on their online activities once they leave the app.
This change has been justified by respect for the confidentiality of personal data, but it does not prevent the company itself from collecting information and clearly affects other giants such as Facebook or Google, which cannot continue to sell advertising as precise as before.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, already estimates that these new rules will cost it $10 billion in lost revenue this year.
