Privacy on the Internet has become a viable use for users. More and more people are becoming concerned about their affairs being used for advertising and other purposes, and retorting to use of VPNs and other services to make sure their privacy is intact.
Cookies are a boon, as much as they are a curse. These micro memory storage snippets of code have been employed by various websites for different purposes ranging from keeping a user logged into frequently visited pages to selling their track records to advertisers for profits. Google has become concerned about the ill intents of cookie employers and has decided to put a stop to them to stop advertisers from tracking users. The plan will roll out over a course of 2 years and will be aimed to making Internet a safer place for users.
Google will still store cookies, but it will restrict advertising softwares and other organisations from using its browser cookies to connect with websites they don’t operate.
This is not the first time a company has done something like this, with Apple’s Safari taking this step back in 2017. However, with Google Chrome being more dispersed, having penetrated 64% of the market(thrice as much as Safari), more users will be affected by the changes this time around.
Google’s announcement was being expected by the industry from a while, therefore the transition should not affect a lot of companies. That being said, shares of some rival advertising software companies fell on Tuesday, including Criteo SA (CRTO.O) by 8% and Trade Desk Inc (TTD.O) by 1.4%.
These changes will not come into effect until Google can come up with other means that it deems safer than cookies.
How this affects users and advertisers is yet to be seen. However, with data on users becoming limited, companies might find it difficult to estimate what the user might be interested in, making online retail harder.
