> In some ways, this is a loss—tracking cookies are undeniably terrible, and Google's proposed alternative is better for privacy, at least on paper. However, universal adoption of the Privacy Sandbox could also give Google more power than it already has, and the supposed privacy advantages may never have fully materialized as Google continues to seek higher revenue.<p>Cookies are much maligned these days, but to defend them a little bit - the alternatives are almost universally worse for user privacy. Persistent session storage? Browser fingerprinting? Locking everything behind a user account with mandatory sign-in? Blegh.<p>On the other hand, cookies are a pretty transparent interaction. It's a tiny file that sites in your browser. You can look at them. They expire on their own. You as a user can delete, modity, edit, hack them to your heart's content. They contain no PII on their own. They are old-fashioned and limited and that's a good thing.<p>The real problem here is not the cookie - it's the third party data networks. I would much rather focus our ire on the function rather than the form.