German publishers petition against Google's cookie policy

German publishers petition against Google's cookie policy

EU competition chief

Google has been fined by EU General Court and French data protection authority

Hundreds of German publishers, advertisers and media and industry groups have submitted a 108-page complaint to the European Commissioner for Competition. They have argued that Google's plan to replace third-party cookies with alternatives for ad tracking breaches the European Union (EU) competition law.

The main concern was that the impact on advertisers, publishers and intermediaries, would be such that they would no longer be able to track users' preferences and lose a significant amount of ad revenue.

According to the reports on Google's proposals to remove third-party cookies since last year, the changes could result in online publishers losing up to 70 percent of their revenue.

The EU officials had earlier expressed concerns that Google was abusing its high-bargaining position to gain an unfair advantage over its competitors, leading to a €2.4bn fine last November by the EU General Court.

The complaint asked that publishers "remain in a position where they are allowed to ask their users for consent to process data, without Google capturing this decision" and that "Google must respect the relationship between publishers and users without interfering."

Google had said that most browsers were already stepping away from third-party cookies and that the company would implement its new cookie policy "in consultation with technical standards bodies, regulators, and the industry, while also proposing new alternative technologies."

Earlier this month, the French data protection authority fined Google €210M on finding that its cookie usage policy violated the General Data Protection Regulation and French data protection law.

The German competition authority found that Google had cross-market significance and subjected it to the country's new abuse control law. In the US, Google is being sued by a coalition of state attorneys allegedly colluding with Facebook to manipulate programmatic ad markets.