The Privacy Sandbox is an initiative led by Google to create web standards for websites to access user information without compromising privacy.[1] Its core purpose is to facilitate online advertising by sharing a subset of user private information without the use of third-party cookies.[2]: 39 The initiative includes a number of proposals, many of these proposals have bird-themed names which are changed once the corresponding feature reaches general availability.[3] The technology include Topics API (formerly Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC),[4] Protected Audience, Attribution Reporting, Private Aggregation, Shared Storage and Fenced Frames as well as other proposed technologies.[5] The project was announced in August 2019.[6][7]
On September 7, 2023, Google announced general availability of Privacy Sandbox APIs, naming explicitly Topics, Protected Audience, Attribution Reporting, Private Aggregation, Shared Storage and Fenced Frames, meaning these features were enabled for more than half of Google Chrome users.[8][9] Privacy Sandbox features were also made available on Android around the same time.[10][11]
The initiative has been described as anti-competitive and has generated an antitrust response due to concerns that the introduced proposals limit tracking through traditional methods and push advertisers to use Google as a middleman in order to show advertisements.