UK lobby group urges authorities to avoid Google from gaining increased control of ad data

Google faces new regulatory scrutiny on Britain over ideas to revamp its marketing data system, after a business lobbying group complained to the competition watchdog that the improvements would cement the US tech giant's on the web dominance.

Marketers for an Start Web, a good coalition of technology and publishing corporations, said on Mon that it is urging the UK competition watchdog to step in and pressure Google to delay the rollout of it has the “personal privacy sandbox” scheduled for early next yr.

The brand new technology would remove so-called alternative party cookies that allow users to be tracked over the internet by storing information on their devices, replaced by tools owned by Google. That means login, marketing and other features will be removed the open internet and positioned under Google’s control, the group said.

The Competition and Market segments Authority confirmed it received the complaint.

“We take the things raised found in the complaint extremely seriously, and will determine them carefully with a good view to making a decision whether to open a good formal investigation beneath the Competition Work,” it stated in a declaration, adding that if the problems need urgent focus, it could consider using “interim procedures" to avoid any suspected anti-competitive carry out pending a complete investigation.

The complaint follows up on concerns about Google's new system that the watchdog raised in a July report about online platforms and digital advertising. The article recommended the British federal government adopt a fresh regulatory approach to governing digital giants making a lot of money from online ads.

Google said the new technology increase privacy for users even while also supporting publishers.

“The ad-supported web reaches risk if digital advertising practices don’t evolve to reflect people’s changing expectations around how info is collected and used," the business said.

Google's Chrome may be the world's dominant browser, and many more like Microsoft's Edge derive from its Chromium technology. Google settings more than 90 % of the UK’s £7.3 billion-pound ($8.8bn) search advertising industry, the CMA said in its July report.

Third-party cookies allow ad buyers to better target their ads to web users. Personal privacy sandbox will deny publishers access to the cookies they employ to market digital ads, that may crimp their revenues by up to two-thirds, Internet marketers for an Open World wide web said.

The group said Google’s changes will maneuver the digital ad business “in to the walled garden of its Chrome browser, where it could be beyond the reach of regulator”. It would like a delay until authorities develop long term remedies to mitigate Google's dominance over major parts of the web.