Google's Making It Easier to Reject All Cookies

pcmag.com:

Google is making it easier for people to reject all of the cookies it wants to store in their browsers—but only because the CNIL issued a 150 million Euro ($170 million) fine in January.

The CNIL said in January that Google, YouTube, and other websites "offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies" but "do not provide an equivalent solution (button or other) enabling the Internet user to easily refuse the deposit of these cookies." The regulator said that requiring several clicks to deny cookies but just one click to accept them was a problem.

So now Google is rectifying that situation. "Soon, anyone visiting Search and YouTube in Europe while signed out or in Incognito Mode will see a new cookie consent choice," the company says. "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."

Google says this one-click "Reject all" button is rolling out to users in France now and will soon make its way to the UK, Switzerland, and the European Economic Area. The change doesn't appear to be making its way to the US, of course, because American privacy laws aren't nearly as strict as their European counterparts. (Which doesn't seem likely to change any time soon.)

"This update meant we needed to re-engineer the way cookies work on Google sites, and to make deep, coordinated changes to critical Google infrastructure," the company says. "Moreover, we knew that these changes would impact not only Search and YouTube, but also the sites and content creators who use them to help grow their businesses and make a living."

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