If you’ve been running a website over the last years with any kind of a business-focused intent in mind, there is little doubt that you have engaged with the business of third-party cookies.
Yes, third-party cookies; the things that websites drop into your device (after asking your permission of course) in order to make their site function properly; but also, and let’s face it, mainly, to track people around in pursuit of the mighty advertising dollar or (insert currency of your choice).
The thing with cookies is that they are on the frontline of the age-old conflict between user privacy and monetization.
And by monetization I mean advertising.
But hey, people like a. privacy and b. convenience. These are the main two reasons why there’s been a push over the last few years to phase out the cookie strategy in favour of something else that gives users both privacy and convenience while also giving website owners to the ability to show them ads, in order to make money from running their websites, while also keeping the content (mainly/often) free.
Am I simplifying this?
Yes.
And we delve a little deeper in further down the page. But I don’t want to lose you; and I know you clicked on this article for one reason and one reason only:
The startling news that Google, despite its promises and its almost constant updates since 2020 on how well the process has been going has decided to NOT DITCH THE COOKIE AFTER ALL.
Yes, this is a fact that deserves all caps.
The rise of attempts to protect the privacy of internet users came, let’s face it, a little late. The tech giants meanwhile, made hay while their sun was shining and happily and often abused that assumed but unenforced right to privacy like there was no tomorrow. No, it’s fair to say that they were not playing fair. Far from it.
Finally someone did something, rules were made and regulations put in place, and (at least in Europe and California) suddenly websites had to ask the user’s permission before they dropped any cookies anywhere.
Fair enough, you might say.
But cookies are annoying, and since popping onto any website ultimately necessitated accepting the cookies anyway (unless you want to only accept necessary cookies and click thru to view your options, which all too often means clicking on and reading and doing lots of annoying stuff you don’t want to do when you actually just googled “best chocolate cake recipe” and opened 5 tabs at the same time to flick through and find the best / easiest one).
So Google made the announcement that cookies would soon be a thing of the past. The advertising industry went boo! and users everywhere went yay! and google set up its “Privacy Sandbox” and set a team of researchers to find a way, any way, that would enable advertisers to still make their money (and google to make ITS money) without needing cookies.
Years passed. Tumbleweeds blew through imagined midwest towns. The researchers emerged once a year or so to say that they were still working on it. Announcements were made that things were progressing really very well.
Until.
Until Google seeems to have realised that it’s cookies or the proverbial highway. As in, the advertisers seem to have won, the users seem to have lost (sound familiar anyone?) and we will go on clicking “Accept all cookies” until we die.