This isn't the highly visible anticompetitive behavior which might cause a backlash. Regular people, or even journalists or judges won't even understand what cookie clearing on exit means.
If there's antitrust sentiments towards Google, it needs to come from some where else.
On the other hand, a corporation cannot be allowed to continue its anti-competitive practice just because the subject is too complex for an average person to comprehend.
Techology isn't going away and is becoming ever more important. It seems obvious to me that we will need cross-domain specialists to handle cases such as this in the future -- someone with both a legal and computer science background.
> Many of the most important challenges confronting the legal profession lie at the intersection of science, technology, law, and policy. Emerging science and technologies, such as AI, big data, social media, genomics, and neuroscience, demand an interdisciplinary approach and visionary leadership. Students in the JD/MA in Bioethics and Science Policy program spend their three years at Duke focusing on these intersectional problems and preparing themselves for a seat at the table in these discussions for decades to come and earn an additional degree while doing so.
This is something I've often called a retreat into complexity. Classic example: food corpo gets flak for putting something nasty into their products. They then switch to using an alternative that's just as harmful, just with harder to spot effects.
People understand perfectly well when you abstract it by one level: Google's web browser ignore's some of the user's privacy settings on sites Google owns.
> Regular people, or even journalists or judges won't even understand what cookie clearing on exit means.
It's been almost 30 years since the Cypherpunks. When billions of dollars or existential business threats are at stake, regular people are motivated to find a technically-knowledgeable peer for advice. There have now been several generations of financially successful tech entrepreneurs, some of whom move in non-tech circles.
Although politicians and the court does not understand the cookie, That doesn't mean we won't have a backlash. It just doesn't guarantee the backlash is technologically sound. EU's cookie law, for example, is just stupid from the pure technical standpoint.
It's your computer that store a cookie to local storage. It's your computer that decide to send back previously stored cookie. And they're crying like they don't have a consent.
> It's your computer that store a cookie to local storage. It's your computer that decide to send back previously stored cookie. And they're crying like they don't have a consent.
Fortunately, EU regulators understand that non-technical users exist and need protection from abuse.
If there's antitrust sentiments towards Google, it needs to come from some where else.