Google to stop selling web adverts based on people’s browsing history

Google is the biggest web advertising company

Credit: AFP

Google will stop using people’s internet history and other personal data to sell adverts amid growing concerns about people’s privacy.

The web giant, which is the world’s biggest player in digital advertising, said it would no longer track users across different websites to target adverts at individuals.

The changes, which will come into force next year, could significantly alter the adverts that people see when browsing the web, potentially putting an end to cases of adverts for engagement rings or fitness equipment following them across different sites.

Google said people wanted more privacy and had grown increasingly concerned that their every move is being watched as they browse the web. It said more than four in five people thought the risks of data collection outweighed the benefits of personal ads. However, the company said it would still use data from across its own services, such as the Google search engine and YouTube, to target adverts on its own sites.

The company’s decision will affect millions of websites. Although it is best known for services like its search engine, Google provides technology to many other top sites that let them make money from adverts. Advertisers are expected to spend £6.4bn on Google advertising in the UK, 39 per cent of all digital spending, according to research firm eMarketer.

Google share of digital ads in UK

The company’s power means it may force other advertising companies to follow. Google’s David Temkin said that internet companies needed to respond to people’s privacy concerns. “As our industry has strived to deliver relevant ads to consumers across the web, it has created a proliferation of individual user data across thousands of companies.,” he said. “This has led to an erosion of trust… keeping the internet open and accessible for everyone requires all of us to do more to protect privacy,” he said.

The company had already committed to blocking the use of third-party cookies — pieces of code that are used to track people online — in Chrome, the world’s most popular browser. Wednesday’s move goes further by promising not to use any ways to track users.

Google said it was instead working on technology that would show adverts based on putting members in broad groups that share interests, such as young mothers.

The changes could intensify investigations into Google from competition regulators who fear the company’s influence over the online advertising industry.  The Competition and Markets Authority said in January it was investigating the company over its plan to block third-party cookies after receiving complaints from newspaper publishers and technology companies.

Google’s abundance of services such as Google Maps and its Android smartphone system mean that it will be able to continue to gather large amounts of information even after blocking tracking across websites. Lukasz Olejnik, an independent privacy researcher and consultant, said: “Since Google has so much data, and also controls the Chrome browser, it is essentially a question of market competition issues.”