In what looks to me like a possible response to the European Union’s ruling this week about the right to be forgotten, Google has just registered the domain name CookieChoices.org. I am going out on a limb here and speculating, but Google could use this website to inform the public about how to delete cookies and their private personal information.
Here’s the domain name whois for the CookieChoices.org domain name that Google has just registered:
Currently, the domain name does not resolve, but is set up with Google’s typical name servers, which are ns1.google.com, ns2.google.com, ns3.google.com, and ns4.google.com.
The European Union’s top court ruled this week that data about individuals saved by Google must be deleted when those individuals request that their data be deleted.
“Judges in the European Court of Justice ruled that Google cannot link to personal information about an individual, although the ruling only compels Google to remove the link rather than the removal of the information from the web itself. This means users of Facebook, Twitter and other social media can still share personal information about others so long as it remains online”, according to a Telegraph article.
Called the “right to be forgotten” rule, what makes sense to me is that Google’s response to this may include a new website, called “Cookie Choices”. In theory, this site could be used for a place that individuals to opt out of their data being saved via cookies.
At this point, though, keep in mind that Google has already told us how to deal with our privacy, and they have several ways that they tell us about cookies:
Enable or disable cookies – Accounts Help – Google Help
Manage your cookies and site data – Chrome Help –
Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites
So, I’m not sure how Google will use this CookieChoices.org domain name in the future. One other theory that I have is that it might end up being a website similar to Schema.org, which is combination with other search engines to inform us about using Schema.org data. After all, Google owns the Schema.org domain name as well.
Whatever the case, the registration of CookieChoices.org is certainly interesting; and, they don’t own the .com.