"Web Giants Threaten to end Cookie Tracking" - Or is it something much more?

“Web Giants Threaten to End Cookie Tracking”

What a great title  and spin on what is really going on here…brilliant really.

Today’s WSJ article discussed Microsoft’s, Facebook’s, and Google’s development of systems to control the flow of cookies across their respective browsers, applications, and operating systems greatly changing the $120B digital advertising industry; an industry that relies extensively on advertising company's use of cookies to gather user data which it in turn sells to businesses.   Now, these web giants are taking back control of cookies, hurting the ad companies, and its being spun as a step to increase user security.

To be fair, it could improve user privacy and security by controlling the amount of companies with access to user internet use, and in turn "everything about us" as we've been discussing, but there is something much bigger going on here. By limiting advertising company’s ability to track cookies, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook can now sell this information to businesses.  They have effectively integrated across the stack (again) by removing access to a level that they control (the OS’s, browsers and Apps).  Once again these companies will be able to garner revenues from a layer they were previously only providing access through at no cost. 

But what makes this truly beneficial (or perhaps diabolical), is that its being spun as a good thing for the consumer and overlooks another example of the tech world’s biggest companies taking more control of revenues across the stack.  Is this “fair”?  Does this strategy/marketing help ensure that advertising companies can’t wage a propaganda war on the tech giants?