An alliance of media, internet, and advertising industry associations under the umbrella of the ZAW has contacted the European Commission in Brussels. The background to this is Google’s plans to block third-party cookies in the market-dominant browser Chrome starting next year.
Web browsers such as Apple’s Safari or Firefox are already taking rigorous action against so-called third-party cookies from data dealers or advertising companies. But when Google announced it was phasing them out in its Chrome browser, competition concerns were raised as early as 2021. In June 2021, after criticism from the publishing industry, among others, Google postponed the plan to make it more difficult to track user behavior for advertising purposes in the Chrome web browser. The end of so-called cookies from third-party providers such as data dealers or advertising companies is now being targeted for the end of 2023, the Internet group announced. Previously, early 2022 was under discussion. Whether it’s 2022 or 2023: The anger about the fact itself hasn’t decreased in the past few months – on the contrary.
Advertising industry raises allegations against Google
An alliance of media, internet and advertising industry associations under the umbrella of the Central Association of the German Advertising Industry (ZAW) has now approached the European Commission. “With the planned change, Google would exclude competitors and their market partners from processing commercially relevant data,” is the accusation in a statement sent by the ZAW on Monday. Affected companies would be “inadmissibly denied access to legal data usage options, although the already very strict European data protection laws allow the processing of competition-relevant data using cookies,” it said.
The other complaints against Google in the wording:
- Google, as a gatekeeper, tries to intervene in the business relationships between companies and their users by virtue of its de facto rule-making power
- At the same time, Google itself collects significant amounts of user data and is not affected by the technical changes. Through this behavior, Google abuses its market power under the guise of data protection and distorts free competition on the online advertising market.
- To a certain extent, the company is setting itself up as a substitute legislator, but without being authorized to do so – the design of data protection law is (solely) the task of the legislator. This is at the expense of the free media, the (Internet) economy and consumers. Such behavior is not provided for by European data protection regulations and at the same time endangers media diversity.
Advertisers, publishers, media agencies
Due to similar allegations, the European Commission opened competition proceedings against Google in June 2021 to investigate the company’s practices in the field of online advertising technology. The associations support this process by providing data and analyses, among other things.
The alliance consists of associations from the German media and communications industry. Under the umbrella of the ZAW, it includes the following organizations, among others:
