What Google's Promise to Tamp Down on Tracking Users Really Means

Google is Google because of its lucrative advertising business--and that business works by letting advertisers target users based on what they do on the web. On Wednesday, Google announced what some observers have framed as a major shift in that setup: The company's Chrome browser will soon stop tracking individual users across different websites in order to serve them ads. While the change does allow the web giant and its advertising customers to continue tracking users to a certain extent, this appears to be a significant step away from Google's traditional model. David Temkin, Google's director of product management for ads privacy and trust, described the decision as a move to address growing concerns about digital privacy. "People shouldn't have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising," he wrote in a blog post announcing the change. "And advertisers don't need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising."