Google Pulls the Plug: The End of Third-Party Cookies and What it Means

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Google recently announced that its dominant Chrome browser will phase out support for third-party cookies by the end of 2023. This move is part of Google's "privacy sandbox" initiative to enhance user privacy, but it has seismic implications for the online advertising industry, which has relied on cookies to track users across websites for targeted advertising.

On a recent episode of Security Now, hosts Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson unpack Google's cookie cutoff, discuss the online advertising sector's unhappy response, and highlight some troubling unintended consequences that may emerge as a result.

While Gibson lauds Google's privacy sandbox plans, calling himself "a bit of a fanboy for technology," he notes that "the rest of the world does not plan to go down without a fight." With third-party cookies disabled on Chrome, "almost all internet users will become close to unidentifiable for advertisers," leading to a loss of ad revenues.

In response, other players like Amazon are striking deals with publishers to obtain user data and "compensate for the loss of...cookies that help gather information about users." And some media companies are even asking for more mandatory signups and registration to scoop up first-party data.

Whereas cookie tracking happened silently in the background previously, publishers may now insist that "visitors register and sign up before its content and ads can be viewed." They want to reduce anonymity and uniquely identify each visitor so they remain similarly valuable to advertisers' post-cookie.

So, internet users may soon need to create accounts on sites they currently access for free. As Laporte worries, "We thought those cookie permission popups were bad, but things may be getting much worse" regarding being forced to hand over personal information just to browse sites.

It's an interesting privacy paradox that Chrome blocking cookies could perversely lead to reduced anonymity on the web. Gibson expects the privacy advocacy group EFF to "have a conniption" if requiring signups and capturing more visitor data becomes an emerging workaround trend post-cookies.

So, Google pulling the plug on third-party cookie support will clearly impact the advertising industry's current tracking and targeting model. But we may also see unintended consequences emerge, like more mandatory signups that ultimately reduce rather than improve user privacy on the internet. 

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