Already on various occasions we have talked about FloC (the system that supposedly replaces advertising cookies in Chrome) here on the blog and it has given a lot to talk about As various advertising companies as well as renowned developers and brands in the world of technology have expressed their disagreement in the introduction of this system in Chrome.
With that privacy advocates; however, they're sounding the alarms about what they see as even worse technology, and Chromium-based browser vendors like Brave and Vivaldi are committed to fighting FLoC in all its forms.
Such is the case with GitHub which several weeks ago made known its position on FloC and disabled Floc tracking when implementing an HTTP header on all GitHub page sites.
Since GitHub informed users about adding an HTTP header that would block FLoC on the code hosting platform. Both the HTTP header for github.com and the alternate domain github.io return the header "Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort = ()". As far as the average user is concerned, Google's FLoC tracking will be blocked on any website or web page hosted on these two domains.
And now, Amazon has also made the decision to block FloCas most Amazon properties, including Amazon, WholeFoods, and Zappos, block Google's FLoC tracking system to collect valuable data that reflects the products searched on Amazon's e-commerce sites, based on website code analyzed by technology experts.
"This decision directly correlates to Google's attempt to provide an alternative to the third-party cookie," said Amanda Martin, vice president of corporate partnerships at the digital agency Goodway Group.
According to experts who studied the source code of Amazon sites, the large retailer added code to its digital properties to prevent FLoC from tracking visitors using the Chrome browser.
For example, while at the beginning of the week WholeFoods.com and Woot.com had not included a code to block FLoC, on Thursday they discovered that these sites had a code that told the Google system not to include the activities of their visitors. to report or assign identifiers.
However, there is a warning about FLoC blocking on pages from Whole Foods. While other Amazon-owned domains mentioned here that block FLoC do so using Google's recommended approach of sending a response header from HTML pages, Whole Foods blocking uses a tactic that sends an unsubscribe header from requests for Amazon scan.
And it is necessary to take into account that Amazon is developing not only an online shopping business, but also an advertising business, in which Google and Facebook currently have a large share of the digital advertising market, but Amazon's advertising business is also reported to be growing rapidly.
Amazon is expected to develop its own advertising identifiers in the future. and is trying to improve the tools of the demand-side platform (DSP) without Google's involvement. The decision to block FLoC is not only a direct benefit, but also a competitive decision.
While It may seem obvious that Amazon wants to end any Google initiative, the company has many reasons to hinder the success of FLoC. Simply put, it is not in Amazon's best interest to allow outsiders like Google or other ad tech companies to benefit from your valuable buyer data.
Without the Amazon visitors with the data collected, Google's FLoC could be at a disadvantagean agency official said on condition of anonymity.
If Amazon had chosen not to block FLoC, the company could have helped Google by allowing:
"Dramatically improved results of certain purchases of FLoC in the market," said the executive. Google's claims about the method's performance have already come under scrutiny.
Source: https://digiday.com