Bad news confirmed for 3 billion Chrome users
Remember Apple’s flock of birds swooping around, spying on users as they browse the web, a thinly disguised attack on Google’s ongoing Chrome tracking nightmare. Well, despite promises to the contrary, it seems those pesky birds are not going anywhere anytime soon. This was always a risk—but it now seems confirmed.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the regulator that forced Chrome into its web-shattering reversal on tracking cookies has just fired its latest shots. “Competition concerns remain under Google’s revised approach,” it has said to Google’s latest thinking. “The CMA wants to ensure that these changes are made in a way which supports continued competition in digital advertising.”
In short, you will still be tracked and there’s no end in sight. Almost all other browsers have now killed off cookies. Chrome is the standout. And we are going round and round in circles. Google has spent years trying to find a way out of the tracking cookie mess it created but has outgrown. Alas, to no avail. The issue is that alternatives which water down or anonymize tracking risk changing the balance in an industry that has been built on user data. There’s no easy way out.
As TechCrunch says, and it’s hard to argue differently, “the entire multi-year endeavor to reshape the commercial web looks dangerously close to being killed off after the latest intervention by the U.K.’s antitrust regulator.”
This Privacy Sandbox debacle has been going on for so long now, that a baby born when it started is now school age, and there’s still no logical path through. Everyone needs to earn—the industry and Google depend on it. Unlike other browsers that don’t dominate the web, Chrome cannot just switch off tracking. And so a 2024 (now) lens is being applied to years-old technologies to try to balance interests.
Google’s latest iteration of a cookie alternative centers on consent. “We are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice,” the company said as it dropped the cookie revival bombshell in July. “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.”
This seems to mean choosing between tracking cookies (arguably better for the industry) and something akin to Google’s Topics API, which seeks to curtail digital fingerprinting or external cross-site tracking by grouping users together. “We’re discussing this new path with regulators,” Google said at the time.
“We will need to carefully consider Google’s new approach,” the CMA replied then, inviting views “on Google’s revised approach, including possible implications for consumers and market outcomes.” Well, unfortunately for Google, “based on careful consideration of the responses we received,” the CMA says now, “competition concerns remain under Google’s revised approach.”
The CMA says it will “publicly consult before taking any decision on whether to accept changes to the commitments, and is aiming to do this in Q4 2024. The CMA also plans to provide an update at that time on its views relating to the Privacy Sandbox tools and its assessment of testing and trialling results.”
It’s hard not to see this situation as now markedly worse. Before it had seemed that options were narrowing down. But the shock cookie reversal combined with this seeming CMA rejection of the consent model—which the ad industry worried would repeat Apple’s tracking transparency shutout—looks like a huge setback. “Slow is starting to look like a flat out ‘no’ from the U.K. regulator,” TechCrunch suggests.
“Sure, [users] can tweak that choice anytime,” Digiday commented,“but let’s be honest, the odds are slim. For Apple, opt-in rates hover between 12% to 40% depending on the app category, according to Business of Apps. Should Google follow suit, it could have almost the same effect as its original plan to ditch cookies — just without Google taking the blame this time.”
Meanwhile, those cookies (and Apple birds) remain firmly in place. Unfortunately, while the industry and regulators and Google continue this circular debate, it’s difficult to find any argument that says Chrome users are not losing out.
I have approached Google for any response to the latest from the CMA, at what looks like bad news for Google but much worse news for users, as a new nightmare of endless tracking cookies starts to come true.