Google hasn’t lived up to its promise of crumbling the lifetime of its
‘cookies’, despite pledging last year that the small files it places on
PCs will expire after 24 months.
Company chief executive Eric Schmidt has reportedly said substantial
internal deliberations about how to minimise the invasiveness of its
cookies, set to record activity until 2038, are yet to begin.
They were promised in July, months after users cried foul over the
wealth of their data Mountain View servers would hold, given Google
bought DoubleClick, an advertiser which also uses cookies.
Not only did users object that Google stores their search and browsing
habits, the acquisition of DoubleClick would also let it know their
personal interests, in the name of targeted ads.
To fend off the outcry, Google vowed to issue cookies with a two-year
lifetime in the “coming months,” but today - nine months later, no such
digital files have been issued.
The problem, according to disclosures of Mr Schmidt’s comments seen by
the Financial Times, is that the process to create and deploy new
cookies is more complex than Google anticipated.
Regulatory restrictions were blamed for preventing the company from
broaching the issue with DoubleClick, meaning that the deal was only
given the go-ahead last month, the paper reported.
“What we’ve discovered about cookies is that every question leads to a
one-hour conversation,” Mr Schmidt said, pointing to the complexity of
the self-appointed task.
Although Google still plans to tackle the issue, the company is not
expected to roll out any solutions in isolation, and before doing so
would want wider agreement from the internet advertising industry.
Apr 23, 2008
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