At last, Google has begun cutting off cookies for its users. While last week just 1% of users were affected, or about 30 million people, the action marks the beginning of the end of the snippets of code that track users’ activities on the internet.

Cookies have earned a bad reputation over the years because they have been used to capture data that is used by third parties for ad targeting. If an advertiser knows you’ve looked at a pair of its shoes, it also knows it has a better chance of getting you to eventually buy the shoes if an ad for them keeps popping up as you’re browsing online. Marketers look at this as a way to show you more of what you’re looking for, but privacy advocates say it’s an intrusion.

But cookies are also used to store login credentials, maintain items in a shopping cart and take you back to an article you were reading on a news site, among other useful things that most people find convenient. Further, the vast majority of the internet’s platforms, including Chrome, Facebook and YouTube are free to use, so advertising is the primary way these companies make money. Essentially, you pay by seeing ads, and the more effective the ads are (getting you to buy stuff), the more advertisers pay to place them. It should come as no surprise that other methods will replace cookies.

If you’re ready to go cookieless, you can turn them off now. Head into Chrome settings and select “Privacy and security.” Look down the list for “Third-party cookies” and click the small arrow to the right. There you can click on the “Block third-party cookies” radio button. Remember, you’ll also lose the small conveniences mentioned above. Try it and see if not being tracked by cookies is worth the trouble. All Chrome users should have their cookies turned off by Google by the end of this year.

Google’s replacement for cookies is part of a new system called Privacy Sandbox. Google describes the new system as an initiative that aims to create technologies that both protect people’s privacy online and give companies and developers tools to build thriving digital businesses. It says the Privacy Sandbox reduces cross-site and cross-app tracking while helping to keep online content and services free for all. Third-party cookies will become obsolete and new data-gathering tools, designed to be transparent to the user and more limited in scope, will take their place.

One tool used in the new system is Google’s Ad Topics feature. Rather than tracking users personally, Ad Topics sorts users into categories based on their interests, much like the concept of personas that marketers use to describe their various customer groups. Personas are aggregated characteristics, buying preferences and lifestyle choices that are put together as a single “individual” to make it easier to develop messaging that will appeal to the different types of people.

But not everyone sees Ad Topics as a viable replacement to third-party cookies. It has been criticized by a number of privacy advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Even if it’s better than third-party cookies, the Privacy Sandbox is still tracking, it’s just done by one company instead of dozens,” Thorin Klosowski, EFF security and privacy activist, wrote in an EFF blog post. “Instead of waffling between different tracking methods, even with mild improvements, we should work towards a world without behavioral ads.” Both Mozilla and Apple rejected Ad Topics in Firefox and Safari, respectively, due to privacy concerns.

As Google lays out its case for Privacy Sandbox, including Ad Topics, it uses the familiar carrot and stick method: Want more privacy? Ad Topics will give it to you — the carrot. Want to continue accessing the internet for free? Accept relevant ads or pay — the stick. Google wields a tremendous amount of power as the owner of the most popular browser in the world. Between July and August 2023, Chrome was used by 63.6% of internet users worldwide. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported $59.6 billion in revenue from Google advertising during the third quarter of last year.

With that much control over online advertising, there is another option. If Google no longer offered tracking for ads of any kind, we could browse freely and still enjoy those little conveniences. No behavioral ads would put Google Ads on an even playing field with pretty much every type of old-school advertising — billboards, TV, radio and newspapers.

Leslie Meredith has been writing about technology for more than a decade. As a mom of four, value, usefulness and online safety take priority. Have a question? Email Leslie at asklesliemeredith@gmail.com.

Newsletter