Frequently Asked Questions
No. Your browser will only place you in one cohort at a time, but any cohort might capture your interest in multiple topics, for example both gardening and travel.
No. Cohorts are dynamic and they will update every seven days. As your interests—and browsing behavior—change, so does your FLoC cohort.
No. Chrome has designed FLoC as a way for websites to provide more relevant advertising without having access to your browsing history.
No. Chrome won’t allow you to be placed in groups that are deemed sensitive. Before a cohort becomes active, Chrome analyzes it to see if the cohort is visiting pages with sensitive topics at a high rate. If so, the cohort is dropped before it’s ever used, and without learning which sensitive topics. Sites will also have the ability to opt out of FLoC if they choose to, so the visits to that site will not be considered by your browser when determining your cohort.
The technology is still in the early stages. The results of the trials and feedback from the web community will inform the timeline.
No. Google Ads will connect to the technology in the same way as other advertising platforms, publishers or advertisers. FLoC and other Privacy Sandbox innovations are open source and free to use so other members of the web community are invited to contribute and adopt them.
The "What is Federated Learning of Cohorts" article on web.dev is a good start.