Cookie banners are here to stay – despite Google

Cookies. HTTP files, not the baked goods, have been a fundamental part of the World Wide Web for around thirty years. For the longest time, however, mostly in the background. Most people probably only found out about cookies when the EU prescribed the annoying cookie banners as part of the GDPR a few years ago. My colleague David has [already written extensively] about this(/page/news-von-captain-obvious-cookie-banner-nerven-32421).

So when the first headlines on Google’s campaign against cookies popped up around the start of the year, some people probably cried tears of joy. «Google gets rid of cookies» or «The end of cookies has come» (both in German) – the general vibe of headlines. But it’s not quite the end of all cookies.

In the meantime, Google has postponed the phasing out of cookies once again – until 2025. We already looked at this last week.

But the question still remains: what is Google’s actual plan for a tracking solution, and, above all, will we get rid of those annoying cookie banners one day?

Not all cookies are created equal

Before we delve deeper into the matter, we need to take a closer look at what cookies actually are. In essence, they’re simple text files stored by websites on your PC or smartphone as soon as you open them. They all store information on you and your behaviour on the website. Cookies are divided into first-party and third-party ones.

First-party cookies are only used by the respective website itself. They’re in charge of recognising you when you create a user profile, for example. Thanks to these cookies, you don’t have to type in your username and password every time you open the website. Instead, it simply searches for the corresponding text file on your device and automatically verifies that you are actually you. Incidentally, shopping baskets and watch lists in online stores work on a similar principle. These cookies are essential for practically every website, and will continue to be.

So it’s quite possible that you have Digitec Galaxus cookies on your device. Sorry about that!

However, Google’s plan deals only with third-party cookies. These are the real culprits when it comes to advertising and tracking online. They’re used by advertisers and work across all websites. That’s why you’ll see an advertisement for sneakers on Facebook today that you looked at on Zalando yesterday.

These cookies are used to create a detailed profile of you and your interests and activities online.

They’re then primarily used to track you online and show you advertisements they think might be relevant to you. While they’re an important tool for advertisers in particular, they’re more of a thorn in the side of most data protectionists – and Google.

Google stands alone against tracking

A new feature called Private Tracking is slated to be our saviour. The function was already activated for one per cent of all Chrome users at the start of the year. What may not sound like much at first glance is actually equivalent to a respectable 30 million people. But how exactly does it all work?

With Private Tracking, your data will no longer be collected via cookies, but via Google’s own Topics API. You can find a detailed explanation of what this is and how it works in Florian’s in-depth article.

But here’s the short version. Google observes your behaviour in the browser and divides your interests into three broad categories. Say sports, travel and gaming, or something like that. Advertisers can then check with Google which of these topics have interested you the most in the past four weeks and place corresponding ads.

The promise here is that no one will be able to track your specific online activities – except Google itself, of course. By the end of the year, Private Tracking will be activated by default in Chrome browser.

Incidentally, none of this is entirely new. Back in 2019, Mozilla introduced Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox, which blocks third-party cookies by default. With iOS 13.4, a similar feature was also launched in Apple’s Safari a year later. In fact, Google is more of a latecomer among the major browsers.

More privacy thanks to monopoly?

It should now slowly become clear to some of you why this Private Tracking is also causing concern. Instead of storing data in cookies, Google is collecting all the information on its own. This means that, as an individual, you’re less likely to be scrutinised by a horde of advertisers, but only by the biggest search engine on the planet.

Speaking of the biggest search engine: while browsers such as Firefox or even DuckDuckGo have already said goodbye to third-party cookies, Chrome’s a completely different story. With almost 3.5 billion users, Chrome accounts for around 65 per cent of global browser usage. So if Google bans cookies from its own browser, this will be almost equivalent to banning third-party cookies for the entire internet.

As a result, advertising operators in particular are pretty concerned about a potential monopoly position if Google is suddenly solely responsible for collecting user data on the internet. In addition, this categorisation means that less personalised advertising can be placed. This in turn potentially means less relevant advertising for all of us.

And what happens to cookie banners now?

It isn’t yet entirely clear how the switch to Private Tracking will affect us. Google promises that the user experience online will remain largely the same. Perhaps advertising displayed will become somewhat less relevant in the short term.

However, cookie banners will definitely remain – for better or worse. After all, all websites that place any cookies on your device are obliged by EU law to inform you about this and give you the opportunity to make individual decisions about your data – the Digital Markets Actdemands it. And yet, only third-party cookies will disappear.

Confusing banners à la German tabloid Bild or Zeit Online could possibly become a little slimmer. They’re mainly so annoying because of third-party cookies. After all, these online platforms want you to agree to advertising cookies. That’s why they make it so difficult to deactivate them, after all. This point could be omitted.

But as mentioned at the beginning, there will be no end of cookies this year either way. So the internet will continue to feel like how-i-experience-web-today.com for the foreseeable future.