"Cookies were originally designed to track users across the web on browsers."<p>No. Cookies were originally designed to temporarily store state information.[1] I would be astonished if any of the designers envisioned in 1997 the persistent cross-site tracking that has become "normal" in the late 2010s.<p>[1] See RFC 2109: <a href="https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2109.txt" rel="nofollow">https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2109.txt</a>