Publishers cry foul over W3C crusade to rid web of third-party cookies
Exclusive Movement for an Open Web (MOW), an advocacy group that supports web publishers, has filed a complaint with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) challenging the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) call to eliminate third-party cookies.
The term "cookies" refers to HTTP cookies, data sent by a server to a web user's browser. These key-value pairs serve various functions, such as session management, personalization, analytics, and tracking. They can be set by first-party sites – the site being visited – or by third-party sites if the publisher's web application code provides the necessary support.
Third-party cookies (3PCs) have long posed a privacy problem because they allow organizations with no relationship to web users to track their online browsing activities, often without legitimately obtained consent. While cookie-based tracking of this sort may not involve personally identifiable information (PII), it can be combined with other data sets to identify and profile people.
MOW, instrumental in derailing Google's Privacy Sandbox proposal, argues that the W3C's position opposing 3PCs is anti-competitive and supports Google to the detriment of web publishers. The organization maintains that smaller players would be at a disadvantage without 3PC data because they don't have access to large sources of first-party data like Apple, Google, and Meta.
