A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web

From the OP:

> Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.

The OP also cites https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/15189422 (also published today) which makes the "why" of this self-evident:

> By comparing the treatment arm to control 1 arm, we observed that removing third-party cookies while enabling the Privacy Sandbox APIs led to -20% and -18% programmatic revenue for Google Ad Manager and Google AdSense publishers, respectively.

For the mysterious "new experience in Chrome" they mention, I'll be keeping an eye on their public planning repositories, but there's no guarantee that the project they're mentioning is related to any of these:

https://github.com/orgs/explainers-by-googlers/repositories?...

https://github.com/orgs/privacycg/repositories?type=all

https://github.com/privacysandbox/privacy-sandbox-dev-suppor...

> Throughout this process, we’ve received feedback from a wide variety of stakeholders, including regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), publishers, web developers and standards groups, civil society, and participants in the advertising industry.

Chrome (and Google in general) has a tough problem of having to satisfy such diametrically opposed "stakeholders" -- being stuck in the middle and having to satisfy both "civil society" and "the advertising industry" means it won't do a great job at either, no matter what.

Did I miss something here? It seems like a whole lot of marketing-speak that never gets around to describing what this "new path" consists of.

A major problem with blocking third party cookies is that it kills any embeddable logged in experience. Think payment gateway widgets that would now require you to login every time you want to make a purchase, or youtube embeds that would no longer recognize your premium subscription and roll ads across the web if if you pay for none, etc.

> including regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)

> as we finalize this approach, we’ll continue to consult with the CMA, ICO and other regulators globally

Very interesting that it specifically calls out the little UK regulators rather than the much bigger US or EU bodies.

I've been wearily ignoring the "Third-party cookie will be blocked in future Chrome versions..." notice in the console for months now knowing I'd have to act on it eventually. Hurray for procrastination!

Interesting timing for this. Chrome 127 (releases today) disables Manifest V2 extensions. When uBlock Lite runs out of rules, unwanted advertising will be back on the web.

With all due respect to the Chrome team, where is the leadership, competence, or moral courage at Google? It looks like they are announcing to the world today that they care more about advertisers than users.

They should’ve started with user choice as the first milestone when it was originally announced. Similar to Apple’s app tracking. Or just get rid of cookies and let ad tech be less invasive.

So let me get this right...

Google introduces a lot of "privacy protecting" ideas like removing third party cookies, moving extensions to manifest v3, etc. Then they backtrack on removing third party cookies and keep the manifest v3 roadmap.

Essentially, they are getting their cookies and eating it too.

I can't tell from the announcement or official site. Is CHIPS still a thing? Do I still have to partition all my cookies I write on one domain I own to work on another domain I own?

https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd/chips

"Privacy Sandbox" by Google.

See also:

1. Exxon's "Advanced Recycling"

2. Phillip Morris' "Smoke Free"

> The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.

> In light of this, we are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.

If this is a more prominent & robust implementation of "Do Not Track" with actual teeth from the browser, I would be fully on board. It probably won't be, but it could.

> "Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time."

Do we believe an average Internet user has any knowledge to make an "informed decision"?

Seeing the name "Privacy Sandbox", you might think it would be a ground-up creation aimed at mitigating all of the gratuitous security vulnerabilities that Doubleclick has pushed into the web ecosystem - with deterministic rendering and a fixed lists of system fonts to fix the canvas vulns, permissions checks returning immediate 'no' instead of hanging on asking the user, permissions gating things that can likely never be secured (webgl), and so on with every vulnerability that leads to browser fingerprinting. But no, it's an Orwellian term meant to market something that deliberately violates user trust by leaking even more information!

They forgot to update the frontpage.

Is it just me or that's just a huge nothing-burger? That "new path" is not even explained in this? It's just a marketing speech.

Aaaand of course they use Google cookies. Privacy for thou, not for us.