Why Google won’t liquidate cookies so soon
The removal of cookies from Chrome planned by Google will be postponed to the end of 2023. All the details
The Mountain View giant gives in to pressure from competition regulators, privacy advocates and the digital media industry.
Google announced Thursday that it will move the project to delete third-party cookies from the Chrome browser to the end of 2023.
Cookies are a technology widely used by the advertising industry to monitor web browsing habits and prepare targeted ads to be sent to users.
Google originally planned to delete cookies for 2022, due to pressure from privacy regulators. The delay, the web giant announced, will be used to study new technologies that put both advertisers and publishers at ease. The advertising ecosystem we know today – worth $ 445 billion globally – would not exist without cookies, which allow you to sell ultra-personalized ad space.
All the details.
THE DECISION OF THE COLOSSUS OF MOUNTAIN VIEW
Google has decided to postpone the removal of third-party cookies to the end of 2023.
The company said the delay will give it more time to make publishers, advertisers and regulators comfortable with the new technologies it is developing to enable targeted ads after the cookies are phased out.
"As much as we are making progress on this project, it is clear by now that we need more time to make the whole ecosystem respond well to this change," wrote Vinay Goel, director of technology for Google privacy.
THE NEW ROUTE
"As for Chrome" – reads the post -, the goal is that the main technologies are ready for distribution by the end of 2022. This is so that the developer community can begin to adopt them. Following our commitment with the UK Competition Authority and Markets (CMA) and in line with the commitments we have offered globally, Chrome may therefore phase out third party cookies over a period of three months, starting in mid-2023 and ending in the year.
WHAT COOKIES REPRESENT FOR GOOGLE
Cookies are the technology that has made Google the absolute leader in online advertising. These are tools used by the advertising sector to track and monitor users' browsing preferences, in order to offer them targeted advertisements and ads on the search engine.
Third-party cookies are code snippets that record user information while browsing and are used by advertisers to more effectively target their advertising campaigns, helping to finance free online content disseminated for example by newspapers and blogs.
MOVE TO FACE A DOUBLE CHALLENGE
Google's decision reflects the challenges tech giants face as they try to meet demands for greater user privacy protections without shaking the online ad ecosystem. Cookies have also long been a source of privacy problems because they can be used to track users on the internet.
Not only. As The Verge points out, Google has found itself in a very difficult situation as the only company that dominates multiple sectors: search, advertising and browser.
The more Google stops third-party tracking, the more it harms other advertising companies and potentially increases its domain in inventory. The less Google stops tracking, the more likely it is to be targeted for failing to protect user privacy.
And whatever it does, it will be observed by regulators, privacy advocates, advertisers, publishers, and anyone else with any kind of interest in the web.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-google-non-liquidera-i-cookie-cosi-presto/ on Fri, 25 Jun 2021 08:00:31 +0000.