Good news for online privacy, bad news for advertisers

There is riveting news within the complex digital media sector, especially for those online users who place a premium on personal privacy. Google has announced that it will cease the use of third-party cookies by the year 2022 which means that media companies and advertisers won’t get the kind of access to user data that they’ve had until now. The details are sketchy, but they have indicated that they intend to establish privacy as the default position, rather than the other way around — where tech companies have full and unrestricted access to user data.

The gigantic valve of human advancement obstructs our return to simpler days when BBC, still referred to as British Broadcasting Corporation, was the distinct and unequivocal voice of the Great Empire. At that time, in a smoke-filled boardroom, a well-paid media executive declared in between puffs of an overpriced Cuban Churchill that ‘media research was unnecessary’. He and his colleagues were convinced that they knew exactly what their viewers wanted to watch, and that asking for their opinion was an utter waste of time.

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