Last month the CMA released its quarterly update report on Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals (see here), laying bare the persistent technical and design faults of Google’s API. Overall, progress has been glacial and shows little sign of quickening largely due to fundamental design flaws which, as we see it, make it exceedingly improbable for these technologies to ever offer functional equivalence to current solutions.
See below a statement made by Tim Cowen, legal counsel for MOW:
“These reports acknowledge that, after three years of trying, Google has failed to produce any evidence that its Privacy Sandbox APIs are viable. Indeed if anything they have only shown that it is provably less effective than the existing options. This ongoing process is increasingly looking like a massive waste of not just Google’s time, but also that of the advertisers and partners who are having to invest significant resources in testing this failed project. Google needs to acknowledge that insufficient progress has been made to justify the amount of disruption that is being caused to the industry. Google’s own report acknowledges that it needs to comply with the commitments prior to progressing this product – there’s no sign that they are close to achieving that goal or that it’s even possible. It’s incumbent on Google to either bin this project now or demonstrate clearly how they might hope to fix it.”