Google cancels plans to kill off cookies for advertisers

vegeta@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 351 points –
Google cancels plans to kill off cookies for advertisers
cnbc.com
44

All the more reason to use Firefox with uBlock Origin if you can, which despite concerns regarding Mozilla are still much more likely to align with users' best interests and help you avoid being tracked all over the web.

Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.

What does this even mean, Google?

What does this even mean?

There's an opt-out check box buried 4 clicks deep in Chrome settings. The choices are "Allow 3rd party Cookies" and "Ask me later".

It should reset every time the browser is closed and/or daily to respect the, uh, dynamics of the modern consumer.

"You may not want it now, but you'll want it tomorrow. We'll help you make this decision for you."

Means they'd like to replace cookies with something proprietary that they control.

they're trying, with that 'privacy' sandbox crap.

Enshittification is a pattern where online services and products experience a decline in quality over time. It is observed as platforms transition through several stages: initially offering high-quality services to attract users, then shifting to favor business customers to increase profitability, and finally focusing on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of both users and business customers. #

despite their issues

What issues?

Edited to clarify which one I was referring to.

The definition of issue here changes significantly from person to person, from some disliking Firefox's visual design to others criticizing business and technical decisions by Mozilla.

Honestly, there's nothing I feel like bringing up and starting another discussion over. I mostly added that to stop certain folks from cleverly answering "but what about ? Mozilla isn't a saint!" As though that wasn't taken into account from the start.

Pages blocking you because you block their cookies

That's not an issue inherent to Firefox and anyone that cares enough to block cookies usually has the know-how of how to re-enable them for a specific page.

Total cookie protection can have site breakage, even for very casual users. And it is enabled by default. That beeing said it is easy to stop for a site. And quite rare. Total cookie protection is a very nice fix for the cookie tracking issue imho.

Firefox is an obvious spyware, same as Chrome. uBlock Origin is weak, only uMatrix is a working solution

Seems they're both from the same developer, with slightly different objectives. However, uMatrix's repository has been archived and hasn't updated in years. Even if you use a fork, the first line of the README is "Definitely for advanced users." I don't consider uMatrix a working solution for the average user, which is most people.

I don't feel like engaging with the first phrase of your comment as it is, lacking even a single concrete example or further resources to look into.

I don't feel like engaging with the first phrase of your comment as it is, lacking even a single concrete example or further resources to look into.

But but but... don't you trust them?

You're right about advanced users. But I think people should dig deeper, advance, to get their hands on something better. Average person might as well not need adblockers at all, as far as I'm concerned "normies" are ignorant enough just to live with ads all around

I think this is the first time Google killed a plan to kill.

Just you wait, now that their plan to kill 3P cookies failed, FLOC will be on killedbygoogle.com in a year or two.

This is just the natural progression in the length of their product lifecycles, really.

Remember when cookies were used for session data, and local preferences? Good times

I’m going to wager that killing cookies was going to kneecap their ad business significantly, so they got cold feet and are looking for a scapegoat.

They definitely knew it would impact their ad business but I think what did it was the competition authorities saying they couldn't do it to their competitors either, even if they were willing to take the hit on their own services.

Impact on their business (bold added): https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/15189422

  • Programmatic revenue impact without Privacy Sandbox: By comparing the control 2 arm to the control 1 arm, we observed that removing third-party cookies without enabling Privacy Sandbox led to -34% programmatic revenue for publishers on Google Ad Manager and -21% programmatic revenue for publishers on Google AdSense.
  • Programmatic revenue impact with Privacy Sandbox: By comparing the treatment arm to control 1 arm, we observed that removing third-party cookies while enabling the Privacy Sandbox APIs led to -20% and -18% programmatic revenue for Google Ad Manager and Google AdSense publishers, respectively.

Are there any methods of saving login and session data without the use of cookies? Because if Google killed cookies and I had to log in every single time I wanted to use something: I would stop using everything because of the inconvenience.

The plan was only to kill off third-party cookies, not first-party so being able to log into stuff (and stay logged in) was not going to be affected. Most other browsers have already blocked or limited third-party cookies but most other browsers aren't owned by a company that runs a dominant ad-tech business, so they can just make those changes without consulting anyone.

Also, it looks like there might be some kind of standard for federated login being worked on but I haven't really investigated it: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FedCM_API

So… was Google just fucking with advertisers, basically saying “you’re so dependent on us, we can choose to make you freak out about a technology change that never happens?” That would be pretty diabolical, which means I wouldn’t put it past them.

The goal was to come up with an alternative that gave Google a significant advantage in advertising while appearing to protect privacy. That project has apparently failed, so it's now more like business as usual.

it sounds like they replaced it with something worse

So they get to keep their Ad Privacy malware and cookies. Sounds like that was their endgame.