Google has recently changed its time plans regarding the features to be released in the next period. The Privacy Sandbox timeline has also been updated this month, and Chrome will apparently not start testing FLoC and other technologies until first quarter next year .
Google is delaying in particular the testing phase of the “Showing Relevant Content and Ads” technologies. The two APIs affected are FLoC (new technology focused on privacy for advertising and other cookies group-based tracking) and FLEDGE , which allows remarketing without third parties being able to track users' navigation through the sites. Testing was originally scheduled to start in Q4 2021, but there is now another three months to wait.
In a statement, Google also explained that:
With the privacysandbox.com program update this month we are slightly adjusting the timelines for some proposals, including FLoC and Fledge. We received substantial feedback from the web community during the initial proof of origin for FLoC, and our teams are working on changes to the proposal that improves people's privacy without incentivizing people to switch to worse alternatives like fingerprinting.
