Google defends tracking cookies—some experts aren’t buying it

Article note: As the article obliquely points out, behavioral tracking is _only_ valuable in net-harmful ways. No one except the ad brokers is making any extra money from hyper-targeted advertising. The 'content producers' aren't actually getting any extra revenue from gathering reams of behavioral data, and now the reams of behavioral data are available for abuse. The rent-seeking middle men, and bad actors seeking to stir shit and manipulate people are the only ones coming out ahead on this regime, and society at large would be better without them. Furthermore, you shouldn't need to be me (with graduate degrees in computing-adjacent fields) to hope to even lessen the degree of surveillance and surveillance-based harassment you are subjected to.

Enlarge (credit: Leni Tuchsen)

Google's Chrome team is feeling pressure from competitors over ad tracking. Apple has long offered industry-leading protection against tracking cookies, while Mozilla recently announced that Firefox will begin blocking tracking cookies by default. Microsoft has been experimenting with tracking protection features in Edge, too.

But Google has a problem: it makes most of its money selling ads. Adopting the same aggressive cookie blocking techniques as its rivals could prevent Google's customers from targeting ads—potentially hurting Google's bottom line.

So in a blog post last week, Google outlined an alternative privacy vision—one that restricts some forms of user tracking without blocking the use of tracking cookies any time soon.