> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.adlingo.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts)
- URL: https://www.adlingo.org/glossary/floc/
- Published: 2025-01-15T10:57:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-01-15T10:57:00.000Z
- Description: Google's retired proposal for cookie-less targeting that would have grouped users with similar browsing behaviors into cohorts for ad targeting.
- Author: Travis Lusk
- Tags: Google & Regulation, #glossary, #Import 2026-10-27 17:05

Google's first major attempt to replace third-party cookies with something privacy-safe. The concept: group users by browsing behavior into cohorts, then target the cohort instead of the individual. Privacy advocates, regulators, and publishers all pushed back, for different reasons. Google retired it in 2022 and replaced it with Topics API. Understanding why FLoC failed explains a lot about why the rest of the Privacy Sandbox struggled too. Google retired most of it in October 2025.