Google Says, “No More Cookies for You!”

If only there were another way to figure out my likes and dislikes

By Ed Goldman

When we learned last week that “Google” is eliminating “cookies” did you think you’d wandered into a preschool at nap time in 1997?  (“Oh, Billy. You didn’t roll up your mat and put your crayons back in your cubby. No cookies for you, Mister!”)  

That year 1997 is significant because it’s right before Google began its quest in 1998 for inter-galactic domination as the go-to source for every tidbit of info about damn near everything.

Oddly enough, “Cookies”—the online advertising tracker of our likes, dislikes, buying habits and frequently disgusting fixations—has been around since 1994. Seen in this light, you might say the egg came four years before the chicken—which is to say, our tastes could be tracked before we could fully act on them. (Note to our more sensitive readers: If bogus equivalencies make you uncomfortable in any way, feel free to jump to the next paragraph. I know I’m going to.)

I realize that before Google, there was “Ask Jeeves,” which morphed into plain old “Ask!” But sending inquiries to an imaginary white British butler might have alienated the more culturally diverse users among us. Even I always felt that if I asked Jeeves to define an urban term like “booty” the response would start, “I daresay!” then proceed to list the various types of baby shoes on the market.

Even the most casual of Internet users knows that when you visit a website for the first time you’re likely to be cautioned that it uses cookies—and you’re given the opportunity to accept or reject them.

Well, who among us ever rejects cookies? This is the genius of branding. Had the inventor of cookies—Lou Montulli, who was working at Netscape at the time—named his product “fruitcake,” “liver” or “kale,” would we have so readily opted in when offered a choice?

I’m sure I’ll irritate many of you who value privacy above almost anything else when I reveal that I always accepted “cookies.” My feeling is almost the opposite of paranoia—though not all the way to pronoia, which is the assumption that everyone and everything in the universe wants the best for me. I don’t feel that upbeat.

But I do believe that my firmly opting out of every data-gathering app or device would just be forcing self-delusion to work overtime. There are so many ways for people and ‘bots to find out anything they want to know about me that, to quote “Star Trek”‘s Borg credo, “Resistance is futile.” 

For example, and I’m sure you suspect this, the supermarket industry probably knows more about us and our habits than our CPA, shrink or religious leader does. Bartenders and hair stylists likely come in second.

If we pay our credit cards by mail, anyone who rips open the return envelope can see the account’s numbers and our address. And a few weeks ago, millions of Comcast customers, including me, found that the cable giant’s system had been hacked. This means someone now knows the password to access my account. I have just two things to say to that person: