Privacy and sharing of the user data have been a critical and sensitive issue for a while now and most companies are trying not to get on the bad side of it. Recently, Google announced details about FLoC or Federated Learning of Cohorts, which would be the new way of tracking the user activity while they are surfing the internet and doing various things. Earlier, the same use was done through third-party cookies while using a browser like Google Chrome.
However, FLOC will allow any browser to collect information about the users and study their behavior as it is based on machine learning. Later, they will be grouped into cohorts based on the study. As per Google, it ensures more privacy for user data as the machine learning program will only take the information that is required to make the experience of the users better with the ads and will not collect more information like third-party cookies. After this, the ads will be displayed to the users based on cohort and not the individual data. Google claims that it protects users from tracking methods that are intrusive.
However, browsers-focused companies like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and others have decided that they will not be adopting the technology on their platform and will be warning the users about the same as well. As per them, they are automatically tracking the user through the new method without even giving them a choice to adopt it. It might also be possible that people using Google Chrome along with the Google account in sync might already be tracked through the new way, without them even knowing about it. So instead of increasing the standard of privacy for the users, it is harming them.