It’s all done in a “double-blind” way, Ramaswamy said, meaning the personal information that Google has can’t be seen by merchants or its credit and debit card partners. By the same token, Google is blocked from seeing personal information held by its partners.
When it first described the tracking program to The Associated Press, Google provided an example of how it would be able to identify a specific purchase made in a physical store by a consumer who had clicked on a digital ad run by the merchant. On Tuesday, though, Google executives stressed that it won’t be able to peer that deeply into what people are buying.
Google’s tool won’t work for cash payments or the 30 percent of U.S. card transactions that Google can’t currently access. And this works only for individuals who log in.
Google gives its users the option to limit the company’s tracking and control what types of ads they are shown — although in practice, relatively few users tweak such settings.
