Web Standards Body W3C rejects Google’s ad targeting proposal

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Google’s plan to replace third-party tracking cookies with the new technology has hit another snag. A W3C panel has rejected Google’s Topics API proposal, saying it will not adequately protect user privacy. “We don’t want it to go any further,” said Amy Guy, of the W3C’s technical architecture group.

One of Google’s big new bets to save targeted advertising across the web once it deletes third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome browser has just hit a major snag, after a key web standards body rejected the proposal.

The online advertising industry is racing towards a 2024 deadline as Google says it plans to phase out third-party cookies from Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser. Since 2020, Google has been testing a number of cookie-free offerings as part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative, designed to allow targeted advertising to continue to work across the web, but in ways that better preserve user privacy.

Once that proposition is the Topics API, which allows advertisers to target ads to website visitors based on general topics like “fitness” or “books,” based on their browsing history on a given site for a three-week period. Inferred from the browser, these arguments would not identify you to the advertiser or its ad technology providers. Instead, those topics would surface up to five areas of interest to that user in that time period.

But now Google may have to go back to the drawing board. On Thursday, a division of the World Wide Web Consortium’s web standards body, known as W3C, asked Google not to proceed with the Topics API in its current form.

“The proposed API appears to maintain the status quo of inappropriate surveillance on the web and we don’t want it to go any further,” wrote Amy Guy of the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group in a Github post. The TAG is responsible for building consensus on web architecture principles.

A Google spokesperson said that while he appreciates TAG’s input, he disagrees with the characterization that Topics maintains the status quo.

“Google is committed to the arguments, as it represents a significant privacy improvement over third-party cookies, and we’re moving forward,” the Google spokesperson said in a statement.

Guy and W3C did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Guy said the topics didn’t give users enough control over the topics their browser shared, and that third parties could merge topic data with other data about a user to create profiles about them.

Guy also expressed concerns that topics could be used to personalize content in a discriminatory way. This could include being able to select which ads to show to groups of users by inferring sensitive or protected characteristics, such as a person’s race.

The W3C rebuke marks the latest in a series of snags in Google’s effort to scrap third-party cookies. The arguments, for example, were to replace another failed proposal, called FLoC. The deadline for ending third-party cookies has already been postponed twice, and Google has been forced to commit in 2021 to grant the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority oversight of its plans to roll out alternatives in response to a antitrust investigation.

Third-party cookies are small files stored on a user’s device that allow advertisers and adtech companies to track users as they browse various websites. They allow a hotel, for example, to target ads to users who have previously visited their website and help advertisers measure whether their campaigns are working. However, other browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox already block third-party cookies as a privacy feature.

Guy also noted in his Github post that Topics’ proposal hadn’t received support from Mozilla and Webkit, responsible for the Firefox and Safari browsers, respectively.

Robin Berjon, head of standards and governance at research firm Protocol Labs and a W3C board member, said TAG’s latest development suggests the Topics API has little chance of a credible future.

“No other browser vendor wants it, and the leading authority on web architecture has rejected it,” said Berjon.

Despite the W3C’s rebuke, Google could still choose to go its own way, not least because web standards can take years to define and it’s not bound by them. The company has its own business priorities and commitment to the CMA that it cannot remove third-party cookies until new features provide an adequate replacement. Topics are especially important for Google to do this because it’s relatively easy to implement and test, said Alex Cone, co-founder of ad privacy learning platform Coir.

“If they find it provides value to advertisers, they will,” Cone said.

Testing of Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals has also been slow to get off the ground. Publishers have previously expressed concern that the topics would give ad technology vendors the upper hand because they would be allowed access to more data from publishers than the publishers themselves.

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