Google users in Europe get an updated cookie consent banner

If you are in the EU, you may be familiar with the infamous GDPR (Data Protection Regulation) cookie banners that appear on sites in order to comply with this very tough privacy and security law. Depending on the site, the banners usually involve a notification that cookies are being used on that site, and an option is given to agree or not to be tracked. These notifications can range from being very simple to very convoluted, so much that most of the time, they are designed in a way to discourage you from opting out.

In the past year, regulators that determine what these banners should say, have updated their guidance for compliance. As a result, Google has been working with them, and more specifically with France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL), to develop a new design for these banners. They came up with a more streamlined banner that allows users to “Reject all” or “Accept all” with a single click, plus additional – more granular – options.

Soon, anyone visiting Search and YouTube in Europe while signed out or in Incognito Mode will see a new cookie consent choice. This update, which began rolling out earlier this month on YouTube, will provide you with equal “Reject all” and “Accept all” buttons on the first screen in your preferred language. (You can also still choose to customize your choice in more detail with “More options.”)

The Keyword

Making this change was not an easy task, as it required Google to re-engineer the infrastructure used to handle cookies on their sites: all while knowing that changes like this would impact Search, YouTube, and website owners/creators that use Google tools to grow their business. If you have noticed traffic to your site has been significantly reduced recently, this may be why.

This new system was kicked off in France and will soon be extended across the rest of the EEA (European Economic Area), the U.K., and Switzerland. Google states that they remain committed to using the Privacy Sandbox to build new privacy-preserving technologies to help protect people’s privacy and give customers tools to build and monetize their online businesses.