From PC World: Google has been talking up a post-cookie future (in the browser sense, not the diet sense) for years now. But it seems like the company isn’t as confident as it used to be in its ability to completely re-shape the internet… or it might be balking under regulator scrutiny.
In any case, Google’s Privacy Sandbox is now going to be an optional feature alongside old-fashioned cookies instead of a total replacement.
Though this is all a bit hazy from a user perspective, Google’s attempt to replace third-party cookies across the web is (was?) a big deal. Tracking user behavior and movement from site to site is one of the things that makes targeted advertising possible and profitable, and that kind of tracking is primarily done using cookies.
But rampant abuse of cookies—with websites overloaded with hundreds of tracking points on every page, building up user profiles that all but abandon the idea of privacy—has made them a hot topic for regulators.
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