Written By: Ratko Vidakovic
AdProfs / Founder
Ratko is best known as the founder of AdProfs, an independent research and analyst firm focused on the ad tech industry. His newsletter, This Week In Ad Tech, is read by over 12,000 industry professionals, including many top executives. Prior to AdProfs, Ratko held leadership roles in product management and marketing at SiteScout and Basis Technologies. His expert commentary has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, CNBC, eMarketer, Adweek, and many others on various ad tech topics.
For half a decade, the adtech industry has been held hostage by a single question: Will Google actually kill third-party cookies in Chrome? It turns out the answer, at least for now, is no. And that answer leaves many in adtech feeling duped.
This wasn’t just a technical shift. This was also a high-stakes wager. Every company in adtech had to make strategic product decisions: trust Google’s timeline, or hedge against it? Some, like Criteo, took Google at its word. They invested resources in Privacy Sandbox while pivoting toward Retail Media. Others, like The Trade Desk, took a more cautious approach, investing minimally in Sandbox and doubling down on identity alternatives like UID2. In hindsight, TTD’s skepticism looks prescient, but even Criteo wisely hedged its bets.
Privacy Sandbox was always plagued by ambiguity: shifting specs, underwhelming results, and weak adoption. Yet the whole cookie saga wasn’t entirely fruitless. Investments in first-party data technology, ID resolution techniques, and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) have undoubtedly made the industry more robust. As Keith Petri, CEO of Lockr by Viant, put it to me over DM, “Alternative identifiers have offered better targeting precision, cross-device frequency capping, and granular measurement—making the ecosystem more resilient and sophisticated.” I agree, there is definitely a silver lining.
Still, the collateral damage is hard to ignore. How many product roadmaps were derailed? How many adtech startups never got funded? How many careers were affected by uncertainty that, in the end, was avoidable? Oracle shuttered its entire ad business in part due to the consequences of a cookieless future. It’s hard not to imagine them feeling a little litigious.
Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, was one of the few who called it early. He repeatedly stated he didn’t believe Google would go through with it, because doing so would hurt its own business more than help it. I chalked it up as wishful thinking, but he was right. The analogy Green used was perfect as well: Google wanted the industry to ride a bicycle (Privacy Sandbox), while it cruised ahead in a Ferrari (logged-in users and Chrome dominance).
The kicker to all of this is that the crisis was self-inflicted. There’s no law banning third-party cookies. Not even in Europe, where consent rules apply but cookies are still legal. Some might argue competitive pressure from other browsers forced Google’s hand, but that argument falls flat. By not deprecating cookies like other browsers, Chrome has lost approximately zero market share.
In fact, Chrome’s market share today is higher than ever, despite public outcry when Privacy Sandbox’s Topics API was ironically labeled “spyware” by Paul Graham. Maybe the average user doesn’t actually care very much about third-party cookies?
In all likelihood, Google’s retreat was driven by regulatory heat. Antitrust scrutiny is intensifying, especially around Chrome and its role in Google’s dominance. As Adam Heimlich, CEO of Chalice put it to me on Twitter: “It was impossible to make Chrome private because Google planned to make it private for everyone else’s ad business—while keeping it invasive for their own.”
In trying to shape the future of digital advertising unilaterally, Google may have accelerated its own undoing. Its credibility in adtech is shredded. Its ad stack is facing structural separation. The DOJ’s case may take time, but the writing is on the wall. Whether through legal pressure or competitive fatigue, Google may eventually have to choose between owning the browser and owning the ad pipes.
What’s next?
There’s a sense of renewed energy in the ecosystem. With Google’s chokehold weakening, we’re likely to see more innovation, investment, and M&A. Independent adtech vendors may finally get the oxygen they’ve been denied. This could lead to higher valuations and a more competitive and thriving industry.
If nothing else, this saga serves as a reminder: never bet the future of your business on someone else’s roadmap. Especially not Google’s. Their cookie narrative, once a rallying cry for privacy, now looks more like a cautionary tale of strategic overreach and regulatory backlash.
The post-Google era in adtech is coming. The best time to prepare was last year. The second-best time is now.
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