The search predicament: looking beyond Google’s third-party cookie death

Envision search as a jungle fitness center, you instantly envision Google as the kingpin player on this ground. This has been a truth for years now and all of us know the drawback of autonomy which is why the market now acknowledges a need for regulation. Google announced that it would get rid of the third-party cookie from 2022. However a lot can happen in a year, 2020 is proof of that! Does this mean that cookies will entirely bite the dust? Reconsider. I dive deep into years of my experience with the web to share some thoughts, observations, and insights on what this truly indicates.

For when, Google is a laggard

Given the monopoly that Google has actually delighted in and the list of suits (like the anti-trust one and more) this move is a regulative step to create a “net-vironment” that feels less like a net and is driven towards transparency and search scape equality.

However Firefox and Safari had actually currently beaten Google to the punch in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Safari had actually released the Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) update on March 23, 2020. Firefox had launched its Enhanced Tracking Protection function in September 2019 to empower and secure users from third-party tracking cookies and crypto miners.

Google’s option to regard user privacy

Google recently announced that it will not be using identifiers. Google is establishing a ‘Privacy Sandbox’ to make sure that consumers, publishers, and advertisers find a fair happy medium in terms of data control, access, and tracking. The concept is to safeguard anonymity while still providing results for marketers and publishers. The Privacy Sandbox will don the FLoC API that can assist with interest-based advertising. Google will not be utilizing finger prints, PII graphs based on individuals’s e-mail addresses that other web browsers use. Google will move towards a Facebook-like “Lookalike audience” model that will group users for profiling.

Did that raise eyebrows? There’s more.

Do not be tricked– They still have a lavish spread of first-party data

Google is currently rich with clusters of historical, private distinct data that they’ve kept, examined, predicted, and mastered over the years and across their services and platforms. These data provide you a clear sense of the gravity of the circumstance:

• Google has 270+ services and items (Source)
• Among the leading search engines, the worldwide market share of Google in January 2021 was nearly 86 percent (Source)
• In 2020, bulk of the 181.7 billion U.S. dollar revenues originated from marketing through Google Sites or Google Network Sites (Source)
• There are 246 million distinct Google users in the United States (Source)
• Google Photos has more than one billion active users (Source)
• YouTube has more than 1.9 billion active users each month (Source)
• According to Google data, Gmail has more than 1.5 billion active users (Source)
• A less-known fact, there are more than 2 million accounts on Google Ads (Source)
• There are more than 2.9 million business that use several of Google’s marketing services (Source)
• As of Jan 2021, Google’s branch off into the Android system has actually won it a massive 72 percent of the global mobile phone operating system market (Source)
• Google sees 3.5 billion searches daily and 1.2 trillion searches each year worldwide (Source)

Google has an almost-never ending spectrum of products, platforms, and services– Here’s the complete, exhaustive list of Google’s enormous umbrella.

• Source: Matrics360 Google currently has access to your: Location Browse history Credit/debit card details shared on
• Google Pay Data from services (more than 2.9 million!) that use Google services
• Your gadget microphone
• Mobile keyboard (G-board)
• Apps you download from the Google Playstore and grant access to
• Device video camera, which’s not even the idea of the iceberg

Google’s choice to remove the third-party cookie dropped The Trade Desk’s stock by 20 percent

No one needs to have monopoly and this incident serves as noteworthy evidence. Google’s decision to drop 3p cookies stunned The Trade Desk’s stock rates causing a 20 percent depression in their stock value. The Trade Desk is the largest demand-side platform (DSP) and Google’s choice eliminates the demand for The Trade Desk’s proprietary Unified ID 1.0 (UID 1.0)– an unique property that chopped out the requirement for cookie-syncing process and delivered match rate accuracy as much as 99 percent.

Google’s declaration on not utilizing PII also jeopardizes the fate of The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0. which already has more than 50 million users.

Here’s what Dave Pickles, The Trade Desk’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer had to state,

“Unified ID 2.0 is a broad industry cooperation that includes publishers, marketers and all players in the advertisement tech ecosystem.”

“UID offers an opportunity to have discussions with customers and supply them with the sort of transparency we as an industry have actually been trying to attend to a really long time.”

Adweek’s March town hall saw publishers and marketers haunted by the secret that surrounds Google as Google denied to participate in the event. The industry is growing precarious that Google will utilize this as a new way to develop market dominance that feeds its own interests.

We enjoy cookies (just when they’re on a plate)

Cookies are irritating because they leave crumbs all over … on the internet! Did you understand, this is how individuals feel about being tracked online:

• 72 percent of individuals feel that nearly everything they do online is being tracked by marketers, innovation companies or other business
• 81 percent state that the prospective threats of information collection exceed the advantages for them

These stats were originally sourced from Pew Research Center, however the irony, I found these stats on among Google’s blog sites.

On a hunt to escape these cookies or to understand the world’s biggest “cookie container” I checked out YouTube which seemed like a great place to start given that it has more than 1.9 billion regular monthly active users. You might visit this link to see how advertisements are customized for you– the list is long!

My YouTube interest further landed me on this page to see how my cookies are shared (you can pull out of these). Even my least used account had 129 websites on this list, imagine how many websites are accessing your information right now.

Back in 2011 when I was the very first to split the Page rank algorithm, I could currently notice the power Google held and where this giant was headed– the playground simply wasn’t huge enough.

Bottom line is, the cookie death is opening up conversations for advertising openness and a web-verse that is user-first, and privacy compliant. Here’s what I anticipate taking place in search and the digital sphere:

• Ethical customer targeting
• Adtech business teaming up to find manner ins which appreciate their audience’s personal privacy
• A more personal, personalized web
• More conversations around just how much and what data collection is ethical
• More user-led options
• Rise in the usage of alternative internet browsers
• Incentivizing users to voluntarily share their information
• Much better use of technology for good

What do you consider the current climate on the internet? Join the discussion with me on @GoogleExpertUK.

Susan Dolan is a Search Engine Optimization Consultant first to break the Google PageRank algorithm as verified by Eric Schmidt’s office in 2014. Susan is likewise the CEO of The Peoples Hub which has been developed to assist individuals and to love the world.