It will offer more detailed choices for Search and YouTube
European lawmakers have worked to make it easier to keep track of your personal data on the Internet and to keep track of which information pages you receive from you. The landmark General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR) has had a profound impact on how we use the Internet, and has helped raise public awareness of how websites handle our data – even if you do not live in Europe. In order to better comply with up-to-date regulatory guidelines and in an effort to give users more control, Google is changing the way it handles cookies in Europe across its services.
European users who are not already signed in to a Google Account (or visiting in incognito mode) will soon see a new cookie banner on Google Search and YouTube that informs visitors about how browser cookies will be used by the site if accepted. The action-oriented parts here are the big buttons for accepting or rejecting all unnecessary cookies at once. There will also be an opportunity to dive in and become more detailed with permissions if the user so chooses.
Google says the form was made with specific instructions from the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), and the change actually started rolling out earlier this month for French users visiting YouTube. Visitors to the rest of Europe will also soon begin to see the new warning.
To give users this relatively simple interface (not that anything with the GDPR is super smooth), Google notes that it had to make some deeper adjustments to its infrastructure – not that end users should notice it. None of this fundamentally changes the way you want to use either Search or YouTube, but more transparency is always appreciated.
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