Tracking will be more difficult in Europe under Google

Dylan Fernandez

3 years ago

In response to EU privacy violations, Google offers the option to reject all cookies!

Starting in France, the new feature will be rolled out across Europe

The pop-up consent message has been redesigned to make accepting or rejecting cookies equally easy.

Anyone using Google Search or visiting YouTube in Europe while signed out or in incognito mode will see a new cookie consent option to choose Reject All alongside the usual Accept All. With the More Options button, a third option is also available.

“We’ve kicked off the launch in France and will be extending this experience across the rest of the European Economic Area, the U.K. and Switzerland,” Sammit Adhya, Google’s product manager for privacy, safety and security, said in a statement.

Across multiple fronts, including the safe transmission of data via Google Analytics and the Privacy Sandbox cookie alternative solutions, Google has found itself in hot water with European privacy and data watchdogs. The pop-up consent messages themselves have been the subject of many complaints regarding the impact of EU privacy regulations, perhaps unjustly.

There is a possibility that this small change could increase the number of people who opt out of cookies on Google’s properties.

It was much easier to accept cookies in the past – used for tracking, and from which Google could enrich its audience profiles – than to reject them. CNIL, the French data watchdog, took action by threatening purposes.

CNIL found the tech giant in violation of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, which demands that users be able to refuse or withdraw consent as easily as they give it.

Google’s U.S. and Irish operations were warned of fines of $102.3 million (90 million euros) and $68 million (60 million euros), respectively. According to CNIL, the company has three months to remedy these violations or it will be fined 100,000 euros per day it delays.

According to the European Centre for Digital Rights (NOYB), cookie permission pop-ups are “deceptive designs” that make rejecting them difficult. In spite of the fact that 90% of users clicked the Accept button, industry statistics show that only 3% agreed to share their information.

“We want to ensure compliance, ideally without filing cases,” NOYB’s chairman Max Schrems said in a statement. “If a company however continues to violate the law, we are ready to enforce users’ rights.”

As well as making changes to the cookie banner, the big tech company is “committed to building new privacy-preserving technologies,” according to Adhya