Google's Choice Screen Distraction

I’m Alan Chapell. I’ve been working at the intersection of privacy, competition, advertising and music for decades and I’m now writing for The Monopoly Report. If you have a tip to share in confidence, ping me at my last name at Gmail or find me on Twitter or Bluesky.

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The State of TPC Deprecation in Chrome

When TMR last covered third-party cookie deprecation, I opined that Google may have outlasted the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in what is tantamount to a war of attrition over the Privacy Sandbox and third-party cookie (TPC) deprecation. As of Q4 2024, the CMA was closing many of the the outstanding Privacy Sandbox issues (mostly on Google’s say so) and then planning to punt the most contentious and problematic issues to a blue ribbon panel managed by [checks notes] our friends at Google.

All this after Google unilaterally decided to walk away from a five year process because Google didn’t like the grade they were about to receive pursuant to the Sandbox testing. The very tests that Google and the CMA arm-twisted companies into participating in over the years. In that light, Google’s infamous “new path” for the Sandbox should be viewed as a pivot from from: (a) unilateral TPC deprecation, to (b) TPC deprecation via choice prompt.

We haven’t heard a whole lot about those choice prompts over the past several months. I’ve been told that Google is still discussing them with the CMA. Some are predicting that Google will follow the Apple ATT scare screen approach. Others think Google’s approach will be more industry friendly.

In my view, the actual presentation of Chrome cookie choice prompts is EXACTLY the wrong conversation for our industry to be having.

Why? This isn’t a privacy exercise. Rather, it’s a competition exercise being masked as a privacy exercise. In other words, the choice prompt discussion is completely irrelevant to the larger competition concerns.

The Underlying Competition Concerns Remain

The CMA got involved in the Sandbox and TPC deprecation in Chrome because they expressed grave concerns that Google’s move to unilaterally deprecate third-party cookies would have a negative impact on competition. The reason the CMA agreed to accept Google’s Sandbox Commitments was they wanted to ensure their competition concerns were in fact addressed. That not to say that privacy has no role here - that’s why the ICO is involved. But the choice prompt discussion is a shiny privacy object being waved in front of everyone so as to distract from the competition discussion.

A bit of historical background…

Back in July of 2020, the CMA published a market report covering digital advertising and online platforms (e.g,. Google and Facebook). The 437 page report provides a world of information about the ads market and really served as a north star for the CMA’s involvement in the Privacy Sandbox and TPC deprecation process in the first place.

A few items jump out from that July 2020 CMA report. The CMA concluded that:

1. User data is critical to driving ad revenues in the ads space,

2. Lack of access to data is a significant barrier to entry in the ads marketplace,

3. The platforms (in this case, Google) have the ability pursue quasi-regulatory roles which limit access to user data,

4. “Platforms have an incentive to interpret data protection regulation in a way that entrenches their own competitive advantage, including by denying third parties access to data that is necessary for targeting, attribution, verification and fee or price assessment while preserving their right to use this data within their walled gardens.”

5. “The design decisions associated with a choice screen can significantly influence users’ decisions” [and noting in a 2022 study that] “Apple’s current implementation of ATT is likely to result in harm to competition.”

Which of the above points have changed? None of them. It really isn’t even a close call.

Nonetheless, the CMA (and a large chuck of the industry) appears to be accepting deprecation via choice prompts as if the competition concerns are no longer part of the equation. I share some of the possible reasons for this below.

If anything, the CMA seems to have already factored in choice prompts as lowering the negative impact of deprecation on the ad tech marketplace. (See page three of the CMA’s Q4 2024 Sandbox update).

More after the jump…

Yeah, but Chrome will ensure the Choice Prompt is “industry friendly”

Even if that’s true, you’re still looking at a huge disparity in terms of relative footprint.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google (and many others in big tech) will get to keep their first-party cookie footprint almost in its entirety regardless of what happens with TPC. So let’s say the choice prompt results in TPC being actionable on 50% of the current Chrome universe. That would mean that those who rely on TPC would see their footprint cut in half, while Google’s overall footprint is barely impacted.

In what world does that ensure a competitive marketplace?

Yeah, but NOT giving user’s a choice is bad for privacy

That’s the narrative that Google may attempt to spin. “Let the people decide” sounds wonderfully democratic. But there’s a history of large platforms using choice prompts to confuse users and advantage themselves. Choice prompts have been criticized when used in both privacy and competition settings in part because they are so often used to manipulate rather than educate and inform users.

But also, if we’re going to go down the path of offering choices around targeted ads, then let’s at least be consistent.

This is as much a commentary on the development of the browser ad market more generally as much as it’s a comment on the Sandbox. It’s remarkable that we’ve moved from a world where browsers were denying others access to data solely to protect their users to one where they are denying access as part of their own monetization plan. And let’s face it, browser ad solutions present their own privacy and ad fraud challenges. Not to mention that they are collectively yet another black box that makes independent verification of media spend more difficult.

Perhaps its time to start thinking of browsers the same way we all think of trackware. But keep in mind, trackware is supposed to be subject to enhanced consent requirements in many places.

But most of the other browsers deprecated TPC ages ago

Like mom always said, just because your friends are allowed to push someone off the empire state building doesn’t make it a good idea. And perhaps those other browsers should have been told not to push. The CMA certainly had evidence of harm related to Apple’s big ATT push.

Jokes aside, it’s worth remembering that Google operates a vastly different marketplace than the other browsers. While I believe that Apple and Mozilla’s positioning on privacy can be rather cynical (e.g., they both beat up Google on privacy but still sent their users to Google in exchange for a bag of money), neither has the the same scale in the ads business to compete the way Google does.

Yeah, but in the end, the CMA will protect competition, right?

I have no idea what the CMA is up to. I do know that the CMA has been granted significant new powers under a new law called the DMCCA. Recently, the CMA has designated Google’s search and search advertising businesses as well as the mobile ecosystems as their top priorities under the DMCCA. Those “designations” struck me as curious choices given that those topics are well covered elsewhere. Moreover, the CMA has reportedly already looked into the mobile ecosystems and should be well past the evaluation stage on that issue by now. It’s almost as if the CMA is more interested in opening investigations than they are in issuing enforcements.

The area where the CMA seems to have been given an exclusive by other regulators is TPC deprecation and the Sandbox. Why not start there?

Maybe there’s a valid reason. Maybe all the experts are wrong and we’re just waiting for a broad settlement to be reached between Google and regulatory and enforcement authorities around the globe.

Or as I’ve said before, perhaps the CMA is just looking to move on from all this…

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