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Comment by fumar | Hacker News Reader

Why? I get that publishers want ads but cookies are not required for ads. Safari and Firefox have 3P cookie restrictions already.

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Ad revenue declines without 3P cookies[1]. Safari and Firefox have less market share than Chrome and aren't made by a giant advertising company so they don't attract the same scrutiny. When Google tries to restrict 3P cookies it creates the appearance that they're just trying to kneecap their competitors, whether that's true or not.

[1] https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/15189422

Because Google (the ad provider) gets to do all the tracking without third-party cookies (by asking Google (the web browser) for that information), which the other ad providers can't do.

I'm not aware of any functionality in Chrome that allows Google to get tracking data that other ad providers can't, but it seems like regulators should target that instead of preventing Chrome from banning third-party cookies.

When you sign into Chrome, you allow Google to associate websites you visit with your Google account.

Google's competitors complained that they couldn't track users enough with Google's proposed new scheme. They had to bend over backwards and make privacy worse to make the scheme pass the regulators.

Market regulators don't care about privacy or data safety, they care about whether your local ad agency can make as much money as Google can doing the same stuff.

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