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This is a very common thing: when you search for Cancun flights on Google or visit Nike to find new running shoes, ads will follow you online. Most of the tracking is achieved through a cookies-a small piece of code that jumps out of the website and stays in the browser so that the new website you visit can see where you have been before. 

Facebook and Google are the two most profitable advertising companies in history. They use cookies to advertise on the Internet-based on information collected on their own websites and social networks, but all of this is changing. Google has promised that by early 2022, cookies will be completely blocked in its Chrome browser, which is used by approximately 70% of desktop users worldwide. 

The decision announced last year shocked the world. Tracking income is necessary to fund a basically free website. Google said it has a solution that allows advertisers to continue to display relevant ads, but in a way that protects privacy. In short, the company’s proposal aims to allow online publishers, e-commerce companies, and advertising agencies to continue to use targeted advertising to make money while assuring ordinary Internet users that their data will not be stored in an increasing list of companies. And website. But privacy activists have begun to poke holes in Google’s ideas, which may not matter. Ad technology companies such as Trade Desk have taken matters into their own hands and jointly created new tracking tools that use email addresses. 

Other big companies have shown signs of rejecting Google’s proposal. For example, Amazon currently prevents Chrome from collecting data about users who visit its website. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.) At the same time, politicians and antitrust investigators in multiple countries have issued warnings that Google’s actions may harm competitors and further strengthen their that power. For ordinary Internet users, this change, mainly behind the scenes, could have a major impact on the way private companies clean up our data and make decisions about what we watch online. Cookies are written in early browsers to reduce the inconvenience of browsing the web. They allow the password to be automatically filled or the website remembers payment information so that users don’t have to enter their password every time they return. They also created a series of breadcrumbs, which the booming online advertising industry enthusiastically eats to help free websites make money. But with the advancement of technology, the rise of social media, and consumers’ lives becoming more and more online, it has become creepy. Privacy advocates have been criticizing this model. More and more ordinary people are aware of this problem, and some people are dissatisfied with downloading ad blockers.

Google is not the first to make this change. Apple began restricting and eventually blocking third-party cookies from its Safari browser in 2017. Mozilla’s Firefox followed closely behind. But according to research firm eMarketer, the market share of these two browsers is less than 20%. Although Google itself relies on advertising and tracks approximately $180 billion in annual revenue, CEO Sundar Pichai admitted at a congressional hearing in 2019 that people do not hate the feeling of being tracked on the Internet. 

In January 2020, Google stated that it would also block third-party cookies in Chrome in the next two years. As politicians in the United States and elsewhere step up their efforts to regulate privacy, these changes have also followed. 

Since 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation requires companies to obtain permission before tracking people online. In 2020, the most populous state in the United States enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, which gives California residents the right to require companies to delete any information they have collected. among. Like other consumer-centric regulations, California law has basically become the national default law.