Google’s recent setbacks, including their reversal on third-party cookies and a major antitrust ruling, mark a pivotal moment for the web. George London, CTO of Upwave, explores what this means for the future of digital privacy and the ad tech ecosystem.
Google has had a tough few months.
First, they announced an abrupt about-face in their years-long initiative to remove third-party cookies from Chrome. Barely two weeks later, they were officially declared a Search monopoly by a federal court in one of the most consequential antitrust losses in decades (with another concurrent antitrust case about Google’s AdTech business still pending.)
As the CTO of Upwave (a Brand Outcomes measurement startup) I’ve spent the last decade doing what everyone in AdTech has to do – navigate cautiously and quietly around Google, for fear of drawing their ire (or simply being toppled by their massive wake.) I have spent years participating in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) discussions about Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and I’ve watched the cookie saga unfold with morbid fascination.
One thing became clear very early in the W3C process – a small number of companies (particularly, but not exclusively Google) believed very deeply that they had both the power and the right to exercise pervasive control over the entire digital media and advertising industries. Now, it appears that Google may have finally found the limits of its influence: at the courthouse steps.
But with or without third-party cookies, the web must go on. So where do we all go next?
The Privacy Paradox
The Privacy Sandbox initiative was Google’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable objectives: overcoming Apple’s privacy counter-positioning, maintaining ad revenue primarily generated by capturing and applying comprehensive behavioral data about its billion+, and preserving a sufficiently healthy web ecosystem (since what’s the point of maintaining a search monopoly if searchers have nothing to find?)
However, Google’s approach was fundamentally flawed in its overly simplistic view of privacy, focusing solely on eliminating cross-site tracking. This narrow definition sidestepped uncomfortable conversations about Google’s data collection and use, but also set an unrealistic bar for the Privacy Sandbox APIs by demanding they facilitate effective advertising while rendering cross-site data sharing technologically unfeasible.
Google put a smart, capable team in the Privacy Sandbox, but their mission was impossible from the start.
The Monopoly Question
The recent court ruling confirming Google’s monopoly in search underscores the company’s immense influence in shaping the digital landscape. Google’s control of the most widely used web browser means that its decisions about cookies and privacy reverberate throughout the advertising ecosystem. And Google’s “walled garden” approach to its many interlocking properties has allowed it to build an unassailable flywheel by tightly bundling its proprietary data, unique scaled inventory, and ad tech stack.
The Privacy Sandbox initiative, despite its stated goals, has always seemed more about protecting Google’s flywheel than about safeguarding user privacy. And whether the ongoing antitrust trial focused on Google’s ad tech business finds that Google’s dominance of the plumbing of ad buying and serving rises to the level of a monopoly, there can be no doubt that the entire ad tech industry still operates in Google’s long shadow.
Forging a New Privacy Path
Google’s announcement that they won’t entirely remove 3rd party cookies doesn’t mean cookies are safe. Industry analysts anticipate Google will likely implement a consent mechanism similar to Apple’s “App Tracking Transparency,” effectively decimating cookie availability without outright eliminating them.
This scenario presents significant challenges:
- The industry loses momentum in its efforts to move beyond outdated tracking methods.
- The Privacy Sandbox initiative risks fading into irrelevance without the urgency of imminent cookie deprecation.
- Uncertainty surrounding the open web’s future continues to accelerate ad spending shifts toward walled gardens, paradoxically giving a few tech giants even more panoptical views of user behavior.
- Google may decide it has bigger problems than the long-term viability of the open web and simply retreat into its castle, leaving everyone outside its walls to pick up the pieces.
The digital advertising industry stands at a critical juncture. It’s evident that where privacy is concerned, both industry self-regulation and unilateral decisions by tech giants have fallen short.
So what’s next? In a world where big tech can no longer set the rules, what’s needed instead is a collaborative, multi-stakeholder effort to develop pragmatic privacy standards, practices, and enforceable guidelines.
It’s time for an international coalition to unite regulators, industry representatives, academic experts, and consumer advocates. Their collective task should be to craft a flexible, adaptable privacy framework that embraces a comprehensive view of privacy, acknowledging its contextual nature and the intricate realities of data usage in today’s digital ecosystem.
In the interim, we must prepare for a transitional period where cookie effectiveness wanes, but no clear alternative emerges. Advertisers must explore and evaluate various strategies, including refining contextual targeting, exploring emerging privacy-preserving technologies, and learning to think like marketing economists.
Google’s privacy misstep, combined with its antitrust challenges, presents an opportunity for industry-wide recalibration. By fostering collaboration, diversifying our approaches, and constructively engaging with regulators, we can work towards building a truly user-centric, economically sustainable, privacy-respecting digital ecosystem.
Ultimately, we have no choice. Google and the Privacy Sandbox are not coming to save us.