Google will no longer sell ads based on user's specific web-browsing.

On Wednesday, the advertising giants said that after Chrome phases out the use of cookies, it will not build similar processes for advertisers to track internet users. Third-party cookies have long been a key tool for marketers to deliver targeted ads, but they've also been a source of privacy concerns since they trace users across the Internet in ways they might not be aware of.

In a blog post to announce the decision, Google's director of product management, David Temkin wrote, "72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81% say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits, according to a study by Pew Research Center." He further wrote, "If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web."

Google will instead be launching new technology called a privacy sandbox to target ads without collecting information about individuals from multiple websites. Advertisers will instead be able to target cohorts of web users with similar interests rather than individual users. Google can still track users through its own services like Search or Maps.

This is a huge change to the advertising industry as many rely on online tracking for targeted ads and measuring the performance of ads.

Google accounted for 52 per cent of last year’s global digital ad spending of $292 billion.

While this is surprising, the data-tracking changes are a sensible move as Google has faced heavy criticism from privacy advocates on individual tracking. They also have been on the receiving end of heavy scrutiny from the European Union, United States, and other governments.