Google lose their game of chicken with the third-party cookie 

After four and a half years of will they/wont they, Google finally called time on the third party cookie sunset project this week.  

Ultimately, it ended with a quiet whimper and not the dramatic leap into a new reality that everybody had been envisioning since January 2020. It was almost like a dramatic movie that throws a curve ball ending at you. Yes, third party cookies are as thrilling as a blockbuster. 

Some will see this as an embarrassing sequence of events. Google delayed the change multiple times, meandering through different potential solutions along the way (FloC, Privacy Sandbox). They are now settling on an approach that “lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing”. Sort of like a one-size-fits-all cookie banner across Chrome browser. 

This new approach seems like a no brainer, so why did we not go with this option in 2020? Allow me to point the finger: Google are greedy 

What did Google stand to gain by phasing out cookies on chrome browser? Note that they control about 60% of the web browser market. Replacing legacy technology (third party cookies) with something that did many similar things, but was built and owned by Google themselves, would give them greater control over their ecosystem. Making things less precise and transparent for advertisers means more opportunities for Google to make money in the dark corners that can no longer have a light shone into them. Maybe a bit conspiratorial, but many people working in the marketing industry would agree with this sentiment towards Google. 

…not so fast. It is likely that Google didn’t anticipate two key factors when cooking up this plan. 

No one likes a monopoly 

Once it became clear what could happen with cookie deprecation on Chrome, enormous amounts of scrutiny were placed on the solution. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) started flexing their muscles, ordering Google not to continue with the project until they were clearer about their future plans, and could demonstrate that the cookie replacement didn’t consolidate their position as market leader unfairly. Seems hard to do this given the potential situation I explain above. This created a difficult situation for Google that they couldn’t just ignore.  

Money talks 

Let’s talk about privacy sandbox. This is a set of tools/APIs in development by Google to act as a middle ground between user privacy and advertisers needs for some informed ad targeting. A simple description is Chrome figures out what you like, and then can pass this generalised information to sites (rather than cookies attached to your behaviour directly).  

Criteo are one of the development partners of the privacy sandbox project and so can conduct large test on the impacts of the technology. Their conclusion was publishers would lose 60% of their revenue from Chrome (whether this is tracked revenue loss or actual revenue loss is a little fuzzy).  

The other big issue is latency. The new technology slows ad loading speeds, which in turn slows page loading speeds on websites and impacting user experience. With attention spans so short these days, this could be even riskier than the revenue loss (kidding of course – revenue is king) 

The end (for now) 

This won’t be the last time Google attempt to capitalise on their position of market dominance. At the centre of the topic is data, and how it can be monetised. It’s not crazy to imagine a world where Google could charge subscription packages to advertisers to access varying qualities of data for ad campaigns or allow advertisers to enter into agreements with Google where they can sell their first party data. Maybe it’s the end of the tracking debate on Chrome, maybe it’s not (probably not). 

Written by Benjamin Pearton, Head of Activation & Analytics at SYZYGY.