I recall PHK's humble proposal for replacing cookies. Instead of the server sending cookies to the browser, the browser sends an ED25519 key, a "Browser Identity", to the server. Anything that the server wishes to personalize for that identity can be encrypted with the identity's key. At the same time, the browser user is free to choose whichever identity they like, including a fresh/nonce identity.
Google wants to get out ahead of the shift in consumer sentiment on data privacy and ad targeting. No doubt they only have their own best interests in mind. They shouldn’t have a seat at the table when the legislation is being written.
Does it really matter what Google wants?<p>I use laptops for coding and ML (one of my laptops has a 1070 GPU). I use Firefox with containers, one for each major site (Twitter, Google properties, HN, etc.). I only delete all cookies in Firefox about once a month - probably not nearly often enough, even using containers.<p>I do most of my web browsing on an iPad Pro and I delete all cookies on Safari very frequently.<p>I pay Google for Play Music, buy books and movies, and use GCP - that is enough revenue for them, so I feel like they still make money from me. Twitter makes money by showing me ads. Anyway, I feel just fine about frequently nuking cookies.
The propaganda machine that is WSJ. I'm glad that I don't pay $300 / year for that. Here is a quote from the article:<p>> Cookies are small text files stored in internet browsers that let companies follow users around the internet, gathering information such as which sites they visit and what ads they view or click.<p>Compare that to the definition from Wikipedia:<p>> An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the user's web browser while the user is browsing. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or ...