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States and governments have literally sued Google over their plans to remove third-party cookies. Advertising is a multi-hundred-billion dollar business. There

States and governments have literally sued Google over their plans to remove third-party cookies. Advertising is a multi-hundred-billion dollar business. There are a lot more players than just Google here, and none of them want Google to rock the boat. The EU Commission has already launch an anti-trust investigation over their removal of third-party cookies. How do you think Google waking up tomorrow to announce the removal of third-party cookies would go over, from their perspective? If they don't "work with" anyone? You can even see people claiming this in this very thread: > Google would probably face legal issues if they did this too fast, other ad networks depends a lot more on these tracking cookies than Google does so they would sue Google for using their browser dominance to hurt their advertising competitors.

grishka 4y ago
Then it's just one more reason why the world's biggest online advertising company shouldn't be allowed to also own the world's most popular search engine, the world's most popular mobile operating system, and the world's most popular browser. > How do you think Google waking up tomorrow to announce the removal of third-party cookies would go over, from their perspective? If they don't "work with" anyone? People (those of them who still don't block ads for some reason) will cheer that it's the end of creepy targeted advertising.
- nightpool 4y ago
  I agree with you, but it's become increasingly clear that regulators are unwilling to break Google up. So in the meantime we have to deal with these half-solutions and investigations that help nobody and hurt everybody.
JoshTriplett 4y ago
> States and governments have literally sued Google over their plans to remove third-party cookies. ... While continuing to track people by other means. Rip out both and the problem should go away (at least, if the regulators actually care about users). Google's approach has been "fine, we'll add a way for all ad companies to track people, not just us". Another fair approach would have been "fine, we'll prevent all ad companies from tracking people, including us".
- jefftk 4y ago
  That doesn't fix it. You're proposing that Google, as a company that has one of the biggest first-party businesses, remove third party tracking while continuing to permit first party tracking.
  - JoshTriplett 4y ago
    If the complaint is that Google's first-party properties are giving information about the user to the ads department behind the scenes, then address that directly, as an anti-consumer behavior, rather than saying "you have to make sure your browser supports other companies' anti-consumer behavior too to be fair".
    - jefftk 4y ago
      It's pretty widely agreed as being acceptable for sites to advertise to their users based on those users activities on the site. For example, if you read a lot of NYT news on investing the NYT might choose to show you investing ads while viewing other NYT news stories. The same goes for Youtube and other Google properties using first-party information in first-party advertising. I haven't heard people claim this is anti-consumer behavior? First-party and third-party advertising are to some extent competing for the same advertiser dollars. An advertiser could pay to advertise on Youtube (to Youtube's audience with Youtube's information: 1st party tracking) or with Google Ad Manager on many smaller sites around the web (to those site's audiences with Google Ad Manager's information: 3rd party tracking). I'm just giving two examples here, and there are lots more in both categories; YouTube is an example of a site with a big 1st party audience and its own ad system, but so are Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, etc. Since Google has a large 1st-party presence, competition regulators have raised issues with them making browser changes (removing 3rd-party cookies) that would have a side effect of shifting advertising dollars from 3rd-party to 1st-party contexts.

grishka 4y ago

Then it's just one more reason why the world's biggest online advertising company shouldn't be allowed to also own the world's most popular search engine, the world's most popular mobile operating system, and the world's most popular browser. > How do you think Google waking up tomorrow to announce the removal of third-party cookies would go over, from their perspective? If they don't "work with" anyone? People (those of them who still don't block ads for some reason) will cheer that it's the end of creepy targeted advertising.

nightpool 4y ago
I agree with you, but it's become increasingly clear that regulators are unwilling to break Google up. So in the meantime we have to deal with these half-solutions and investigations that help nobody and hurt everybody.

JoshTriplett 4y ago

> States and governments have literally sued Google over their plans to remove third-party cookies. ... While continuing to track people by other means. Rip out both and the problem should go away (at least, if the regulators actually care about users). Google's approach has been "fine, we'll add a way for all ad companies to track people, not just us". Another fair approach would have been "fine, we'll prevent all ad companies from tracking people, including us".

jefftk 4y ago
That doesn't fix it. You're proposing that Google, as a company that has one of the biggest first-party businesses, remove third party tracking while continuing to permit first party tracking.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  If the complaint is that Google's first-party properties are giving information about the user to the ads department behind the scenes, then address that directly, as an anti-consumer behavior, rather than saying "you have to make sure your browser supports other companies' anti-consumer behavior too to be fair".
  - jefftk 4y ago
    It's pretty widely agreed as being acceptable for sites to advertise to their users based on those users activities on the site. For example, if you read a lot of NYT news on investing the NYT might choose to show you investing ads while viewing other NYT news stories. The same goes for Youtube and other Google properties using first-party information in first-party advertising. I haven't heard people claim this is anti-consumer behavior? First-party and third-party advertising are to some extent competing for the same advertiser dollars. An advertiser could pay to advertise on Youtube (to Youtube's audience with Youtube's information: 1st party tracking) or with Google Ad Manager on many smaller sites around the web (to those site's audiences with Google Ad Manager's information: 3rd party tracking). I'm just giving two examples here, and there are lots more in both categories; YouTube is an example of a site with a big 1st party audience and its own ad system, but so are Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, etc. Since Google has a large 1st-party presence, competition regulators have raised issues with them making browser changes (removing 3rd-party cookies) that would have a side effect of shifting advertising dollars from 3rd-party to 1st-party contexts.