Google's Privacy Sandbox distraction highlights a failure to innovate
30/04/2025 | MediaPost
Mattia Fosci, the Founder and CEO of Anonymised, a decentralised platform focused on cookieless advertising, has written an op-ed in MediaPost following the news that Google has abandoned its plan to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser.
Fosci highlights that the 63 months between Google announcing and subsequently backtracking on its commitment to end cookie-based advertising was marked by significant global events and technological advancements, including multiple elections, a pandemic, war, economic downturns, and the rise of technologies like VR/AR, cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles, and generative AI. However, despite these disruptions, Fosci notes that the third-party cookie and its associated technologies have persisted.
Fosci argues that this resilience is not due to the inherent strength of cookies, which he describes as a "hack," but rather a result of the market's failure to innovate. Furthermore, Fosci criticises Google's handling of the attempted phase-out, attributing it to "greed and incompetence" that created uncertainty, diverted resources, and exposed the fragmented nature of the programmatic advertising industry.
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 6,250 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.