Cookies, as we know, are the little text files that track users’ habits. These are vital to online advertising business. Google makes money through this source — in the first half of 2024, 76 per cent of its revenue of $165 billion came from advertising. Cookies facilitate the working of this money-printing machine.
Advertising industry cannot sustain cookies at the cost of user privacy. Cookies days are, therefore. numbered. There should be a suitable replacement of cookies which meets the requirements of all stakeholders, and especially the regulators.
In 2020, Google declared its intention to depreciate third-party cookie support within its browser on the lines of Apple and Mozilla. Third-party cookies suck up behavioral data that is sold to data brokers to be used for various purposes, some of which are not consumer friendly.
Google moved 1 per cent of its Chrome user base into a pilot programme. The cookies of this group were disabled. Instead, tools from Goole’s Privacy Sandbox targeted the ads. In effect, it replaced third-party cookie’s function by some workarounds which were built into the browser. A user’s visit to a site with ads prompted Chrome to declare that this user prefers cricket and butter. That facilitated the uploading of relevant ads. Nothing was revealed about the user. There is no anonymity with third-party cookies. Of course, this is a positive development. However, it sets the standard in the most widely used browser. It allows Google to exercise greater control over online advertising. The problem lies in the prompting system. It encourages nudge in any direction. It prompts to ‘dark pattern’ uses. It is coerced consent. Such a consent would be rejected by the regulators. It is thus a very complex problem. One can be cynical about Google’s plan to phase out cookies. The solution would not satisfy all interested parties.
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