Google AdSense and Cookies (Cookie Law) email

EU Cookies

[Badger37]

Hi all,
I've just received an email from Google regarding AdSense and Cookies.
Cookie Law came in a couple of years ago and seems mostly to be a waste or time and just another irritation to website visitors. I was hoping that it would quietly go away!

The email from Google reads as if you now have to implement a 'consent mechanism' if you have already - are other people receiving these emails and what are peoples views (especially if they are in the UK like me).

I've put the Google email text below.
Thanks.



Google Ads Policy Team
Dear Publisher,

We want to let you know about a new policy about obtaining EU end-users’ consent that reflects regulatory and best practice guidance. It clarifies your duty to obtain end-user consent when you use products like Google AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Please review our new EU user consent policy as soon as possible. This requires that you obtain EU end users’ consent to the storing and accessing of cookies and other information, and to the data collection, sharing and usage that takes place when you use Google products. It does not affect any provisions on data ownership in your contract.

Please ensure that you comply with this policy as soon as possible, and not later than 30 September 2015.

If your site or app does not have a compliant consent mechanism, you should implement one now. To make this process easier for you, we have compiled some helpful resources at cookiechoices.org.

This policy change is being made in response to best practice and regulatory requirements issued by the European data protection authorities. These requirements are reflected in changes that have been recently made on Google’s own websites.
Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
Regards,
The Google Policy Team

[Badger37]

Not a lot!
Since Google's initial AdSense blog entry, Tweet and email back in July I can't see any more updates/news...

I implemented Cookie banners on my sites and am happy to say my meagre earnings haven't been affected.

Looks like I spent quite a lot of time and effort just to join the band of irritating cookie consent websites - something that 99% of visitors ignore...

Thanks EU!

[RedBar]

Thanks EU!

Wrong blame methinks, you should be saying "Thanks Google" if one is not in the EU.

[Badger37]

No I'm blaming the EU. Google wouldn't have asked people to do this if the EU hadn't made up this crazy thing!

[Leosghost]

The EU only required the EU publishers to do this, and even then the original proposition from the EU was that Google "not track" via adsense..Google "lobbied" the EU, to make it applicable to EU publishers and not to Google directly, so effectively Google could track people via adsense and make it the "fault" of the adsense publisher whose site Google adsense runs on..

The EU publisher has no choice about Google's tracking via adsense, no more than they have about the ads served via personalised ads..

Google were just trying to pretend that it was about the the EU to stir up anti EU feeling..looks like they succeeded..

In the EU we value our privacy far more than the average U.S.A citizen does theirs..In the U.S.A privacy is a horse that you have long allowed to leave the barn led by Google , facebook et al, in exchange for a few baubles, and the horse is now galloping across the hills miles away surrounded by the mega corps and the three letter agencies..being attacked and weakened by them ever more rapaciously..all in the name of business and profits for the same mega corps whose real business is selling and mining the citizen's data not the ads..

Many , if not most of the EU's citizens ( the EU citizens are the ones that count in the EU ) are perfectly happy with the EU privacy laws, many or most approve of them..even if many or most will also click straight through the "notifications" to get to the shiny and the baubles..when they are told quite how much tracking that allows Google and others..they are horrified..

Having the EU cookie and privacy notifications doesn't affect the traffic, nor the earnings or "bounce rates" of EU webmasters negatively at all..and from the "reports" of those webmasters outside the EU who put EU cookie messages on their sites after Google's deliberate "scare" tactics where Google, not the EU required it..the non EU webmasters sites were also not negatively impacted at all either..

At least in the EU every time that a mega corp wants to spy on you via a third party script on a site run by an EU business or citizen you are told that is what is going on..in the rest of the world you wouldn't know it was happening..which is what Google and facebook et al want..

A child in the EU going onto the web for the first time is informed that they have a choice to be spied on and tracked or not..you can't say that about a child going onto the net for the first time outside the EU..

[ChanandlerBong]

it simply boggles the mind that someone could come out of all of this blaming the EU and not Google.

Google, as usual, played the part of mega buck corporation that didn't want restrictions, didn't want anything standing in the way of the big $$$. Once you read around this cookie issue, the blame is clear and it wasn't the EU. Which is why I made the decision early on not to participate in Google's little circus. Their actions over this were utterly spineless. They would rather throw their "users" under the bus that face up to their own obligations.

[Badger37]

it simply boggles the mind that someone could come out of all of this blaming the EU and not Google.

Your mind must be easily boggled! :P
It's the EU that introduced this stupid 'law' - that's why I blame the EU #simples

Yes, Google could have handled this a lot better... :(

[RedBar]

Yes, Google could have handled this a lot better... :

The thing is that Google didn't need to actually do anything, most European sites have already complied with the EU law for more than 3 years now with some countries enforcing it more stringently than others.

Google created a "fictitious" policy to try and make itself look virtuous to Brussels...fail!

[Badger37]

I check this thread regularly from a Bookmark - but I've just found there is a new thread people are using for updates: EU Cookie Law: How's it Going For You?
[webmasterworld.com...]


I thought it was worth a mention... :)

[IanCP]

Actually I thought [hoped] the topic died a natural death.

[eeek]

played the part of mega buck corporation

Mega?

[RedBar]

Mega?

Extremely large, huge, it used to be only used as a prefix however is commonly used standalone these days like mega rich, mega bucks even mega stupid.