Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny
This effort is similar to Chrome's previous implementation of a built-in ad blocker[1]. As before, the goal isn't to completely eliminate ads or tracking, rather it's to push the advertising industry in a direction that's more acceptable to users, with the understanding that that approach is likely better for the industry (and therefore Google) long-term.<p>In this case, Google wants to maintain the ability to target ads and detect click fraud, but eliminate server-side tracking as many users find the latter practice undesirable.<p>Given that these changes will affect the entire advertising industry, not just Google, it's unsurprising that their competitors would claim anti-trust. They have a point; Google undeniably _is_ using their control over the Chrome browser to make changes that directly impact their competitors. Google may genuinely believe these changes are good for the industry as a whole, but that might be hard to argue in court, particularly if competitors with particularly intrusive tracking mechanisms are disproportionately impacted.<p>This will be interesting to watch.<p>[1]: <a href="https://blog.chromium.org/2018/02/how-chromes-ad-filtering-works.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.chromium.org/2018/02/how-chromes-ad-filtering-w...</a>