• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 11, 2024

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Monday updated its latest report on the implementation of Google's Privacy Sandbox, but it appears the European regulatory body still has many major concerns.  

Google’s proposal to replace third-party cookie deprecation with an experience to give users choices will change the impact on the ad-tech industry, but Privacy Sandbox tools will remain important to target and measure advertising depending on consumer choice, the CMA wrote in the update.

“We believe our approach supports healthy competition across the industry while improving user privacy," a Google spokesperson told MediaPost. "This approach, which lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, is still being discussed with regulators and we will share more details at the appropriate time.”

Despite giving consumers a choice, Google still has an "obligation not to design or implement the new Privacy Sandbox tools in a way which discriminates in favour of its advertising businesses," the report states. The CMA detailed the progress since the last update earlier this year, as well as outlined its concerns, and laid out a list of remaining problems it believes must be fixed.

“Here we are, nearly three years since the CMA originally agreed to [certain] commitments with Google, and it seems we are no closer to a satisfactory solution," James Rosewell, co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web, wrote in an email to MediaPost, asking how long the industry would "need to be held hostage at the whim of a monopolist?" 

He focused on the "unresolved competition, privacy and product concerns that Google, the CMA and the ICO seem unable to resolve," calling attention to the first line of the assessment that highlights how Google could "be advantaged" by Privacy Sandbox given its access to first-party data.

The report said Google does not provide sufficient clarity to individuals regarding how their data is used by the Topics API.

Google also responded to the CMA's concerns. The report includes feedback received from market participants, and incorporates feedback from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on the privacy and data protection impacts of the Privacy Sandbox. 

An overall timeline update remains pending as Google continues to discuss outcomes with the CMA and ICO. The company views its proposed path for user choice as different from its original approach with third party cookie deprecation, and there are plans to discuss with the CMA the changes required to keep its commitments for updates in the new approach.