The End of the Google Cookie Saga

With a five-paragraph blog post, Google has officially cemented the Privacy Sandbox as the biggest waste of time in ad tech history. 

The company has decided not to add a prompt in Chrome asking users if they'd like to disable third-party cookies, which means not only will cookies not be deprecated, but everything will stay the same as before Google first announced it would deprecate cookies five years ago.

In other words, since nothing will change in Chrome, we have all wasted a good chunk of the last five years of our lives thinking, debating, and writing about the impending deprecation of third-party cookies and the Privacy Sandbox proposals meant to replace their advertising functions.

While I limited my exposure to mostly thinking and writing about the Privacy Sandbox, I weep for the poor, unfortunate souls and companies that dedicated actual capital, resources, and their product roadmaps toward the doomed endeavor. It makes my head spin thinking about the millions of dollars and countless hours wasted on the Privacy Sandbox. 

Whenever someone asked for my honest opinion about the Privacy Sandbox and if they should test it out, my answer remained unchanged since I wrote my first Sandbox article in 2020: don't do anything. I received bewildered looks from colleagues and peers but remained steadfast in my opinion.

I knew a handful of companies were taking the immense risk of testing the menagerie of absurd APIs for the potential payoff of positioning themselves ahead of everyone else should Google pull the cookie plug. If they found the APIs could achieve parity, then my thinking and advice would be to take the late-mover advantage of avoiding all the early pitfalls (but without the added benefit of being ahead of the game). Unless you wanted to risk the massive distraction and dedication of resources for a potential payoff that came with an early jump, a wait-and-see approach always seemed like the most prudent decision.

As I learned and wrote more about each ridiculously complex Privacy Sandbox API proposal and the building momentum of antitrust scrutiny against Google, my opinion only hardened. Introducing the esoteric Sandbox proposals into the digital advertising ecosystem always seemed like a ludicrous prospect to me, given that there are still so many troubleshooting challenges and problems that still need solving within the current state of ad tech.

Additionally, once the antitrust scrutiny upon Google switched from a slow trickle to a full-on deluge, I knew this whacky side project was standing on shaky ground. 

The fact that the capricious strategic whims of a single company could reshape the core workings and dictate the product development strategy of an entire industry should have given everyone pause from the get-go. A company holding this much power to steer every company's strategy in ad tech screams monopolistic issues. So it's no surprise that this final decision by Google has landed right as the courts have ruled Google is an illegal monopoly twice over: in search and ad tech.

The main issue with the decision to remove cookies has always been Google performing a balancing act between privacy scrutiny and antitrust concerns.

Removing cookies would have further entrenched Google's dominance in digital advertising by making web advertising less effective for everyone except Google, which sits on mountains of valuable first-party data, a monopoly search business, a monopoly ads business, and a $54.2 billion / year YouTube business (set to eclipse Disney this year as the biggest media company in the world).

Google initially rode an undercurrent of demands for privacy in the wake of several high-profile privacy events: the Cambridge Analytica scandal, GDPR coming into effect, and Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework release and its subsequent privacy marketing push. Google may have initially thought they could accomplish dual goals of gaining consumer goodwill just like Apple by eliminating "tracking" and enhancing their business lines — similar to what Apple did with ATT. 

However, unlike Apple, they attempted to do all this just as they stared down the barrel of multiple antitrust trials for their ad tech and search businesses. Apple gleefully decimated advertising on iOS by virtually eliminating its advertising identifier, IDFA, and pushed billions away from advertising competitors into its own advertising business. Apple did this without a shred of US government scrutiny while Google stewed on the sidelines, unable to do the same thing with cookies to enrich itself.

While regulators in the United States have not taken issue with Apple's disingenuous privacy push, the Europeans have surprisingly made a stand.

France hit Apple with a 150 million euro penalty for self-preferencing via ATT with its required user choice prompts that use more gentle language in its owned and operated apps ("personalized advertising") as opposed to the harsh language required in non-apple apps ("Tracking") in the popup for non-Apple apps on iOS. Germany is currently investigating the same unfair practices of ATT as well.

Witnessing the heavily privacy-conscious Europeans see right through the user choice schemes of a giant technology company may have influenced Google's decision to abandon their own planned cookie prompt dialog in Chrome.

Most people may have also forgotten that we have also been waiting to see what Google would do with its mobile operating system, Android. Implementing a similar ATT-style prompt restricting access to its advertising ID, GAID now seems completely off the table. 

Even Apple has decided not to rigidly enforce its own ATT rules, while massive companies appear to be directly violating them. The cold calculus of using privacy as cover may no longer be a viable strategy for any giant tech company.

The looming remedies ordered for Google's monopoly verdicts could include spinning off components of their company, which undoubtedly influenced their cookie decision.

The court could order a significant restructuring of the company, which would require spinning off its Chrome browser, Android operating system, AdX ad exchange, GAM publisher ad server, and who knows what else. By punting any major decision until after the courts decide its fate, Google can develop the best strategy to maximize shareholder value for itself and its spun-out entities once it has all the information.

And so concludes the Google cookie saga. I've worked at three companies, had two kids, lived through a pandemic, launched and sold an ad tech newsletter, and developed gray hairs since Google first announced its intention to deprecate cookies — only to end up right back where we started.

I genuinely hope this is the last article I will ever have to write about the Privacy Sandbox and Google's decision to deprecate third-party cookies. I am truly irritated when I think about all the time we have wasted on the subject when we could have been innovating on other fronts — and I know I'm not alone.

Maybe after remedies are issued by the courts and implemented, we won't have to worry about a single company upending the entire advertising industry again.