So far this August Google has made two major public statements concerning cookies, the packets of data websites often place on someone’s web browser for ads tracking and feature customisation. First announcing, plans for a “Privacy Sandbox” a magical world, that for some reason must involve cookies. And also releasing a report stating that “blocking cookies materially reduces publisher revenue. Both of these claims by Google appear somewhat reasonable on their surface, but become a bit suspicious with any real scrutiny. Google’s apparent goal of the so called privacy sandbox is to develop standards to at least partly restrict fingerprinting, but still keep cookies around, because, well.. ads targeting. A blog post by Google’s Justin Schuh says: “Technology that publishers and advertisers use to make advertising even more relevant to people is now being used far beyond its original design intent – to a point where some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy.” This is fair, but the post goes on to say that “large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting.” saying that “With fingerprinting, developers have found ways to use tiny bits of information that vary between users, such as what device they have or what fonts they have installed to generate a unique identifier which can then be used to match a user across websites. Unlike cookies, users cannot clear their fingerprint, and therefore cannot control how their information is collected. We think this subverts user…Google Is Pushing Cookies Harder Than A Dealer On Sesame Street