Google has added a new “Reject All” cookies button on YouTube and Google search in Europe. The development came months after regulators fined Google €150 million. The new banner with the reject all cookies option will show if you visit Google Search or YouTube in incognito mode or when you’re logged out of your Gmail account.
You can stop Google and YouTube in Europe from collecting data when you’re logged out. When you’re logged in, you can limit Google’s tracking from the Data & Privacy page. Google is also working on sandbox measures to replace cookies, so we can expect this to be a temporary patch.
YouTube Europe “Reject All” cookies button
In January, France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) fined Google €150 million. The regulator fined Google because it was complicating the process of rejecting cookies. Users could either “accept” or “personalize” cookies.
Then within the personalize tab, you’d have to disable the cookies you don’t want. But now, Google Search and YouTube Europe will let users disable all cookies with the click of a button. Google has rolled out the feature in France and will extend it to the U.K., Switzerland, and the rest of Europe.
A Google blog post says that the company had to “re-engineer the way cookies work on Google sites, and to make deep, coordinated changes to critical Google infrastructure” to accommodate the reject all cookies button.
Why just Europe?
The above screenshot is from one of Google’s websites in India. Like this, there are many other sites that don’t even have a cookie consent page. Google can track you across the web even after logging out. Google’s reject all cookies button is a welcome addition to European websites.
However, we would also appreciate it if companies could simplify blocking cookies before getting a slap-on-the-wrist treatment from regulators. While the European data laws are among the strictest globally, India is also working on its version of privacy laws.
With all that being in the future, Google could also globally roll out this feature instead of limiting it to Europe. After all, cookies are your choice, and you should be able to control how much or what data you want to share.
