Cristobal Cheyre

Assistant Professor

Cristobal Cheyre, assistant professor of information science at Cornell University, studies how privacy regulations and industry led initiatives affect online content providers and its users and how behaviorally targeted advertising influences users’ behaviors and well-being.

Cheyre says:

“With all its disadvantages, third-party cookies were widely available, allowing some degree of competition in the online advertising industry. With Google’s privacy sandbox, all user data will be stored in a product designed and controlled by Google. Under those conditions and considering Google’s dominance across the entire advertising technology stack, it is reasonable to be concerned that the replacement of third-party cookies with Google’s privacy sandbox could depress competition in online display and video advertising and allow Google to extract a larger share of gains created by online advertising to the detriment of publishers and advertisers.

“The current technology Google is proposing to replace third-party cookies is certainly an improvement from a data security standpoint, as less information is available about users and this information is stored on their own computers only.

“However, the change is not much of an improvement from a data privacy standpoint. Users will still be tracked and targeted based on their online behaviors. If what users dislike is being tracked and served with behaviorally targeted advertising, as several surveys suggest, the changes proposed by Google will not make much of a difference for users.

“The proposed framework introduces a series of concerns around competition in the advertising technology industry. If the change makes display advertising less effective, Google’s search advertising and advertising in their products (such as YouTube) may greatly benefit as they will be unaffected by the change. Search advertising does not depend on tracking, and Google possesses troves of information about their users they can use to profile them. Additionally, Google may garner additional power in the advertising technology stack (the tools used by publishers and advertisers to sell/buy advertising impressions).”