A new battleground in the web browser wars: privacy

Google said it will eventually stop supporting third-party cookies in its ubiquitous Chrome browser. — Bloomberg

Google announced a massive shift last week in how it handles cookies, those pesky digital trackers that chase us around the Internet and serve up targeted ads that are both creepy yet eerily precise reflections of our wants. The search giant, which just helped Alphabet Inc surpass a US$1tril (RM4.07tril) valuation, said it will eventually stop supporting third-party cookies in its ubiquitous Chrome browser.

The move won’t end the Big Brother era of Big Tech, but Google is framing the decision as a significant step away from unbridled data mining. In a blog post, Google references privacy about a dozen times, an awkward pitch for a company that built a juggernaut of a business by tapping into cookies from its billions of users. Can Google, after pioneering and protecting an apparent invasion of privacy, sell its browser to consumers as a privacy-first service?