CMA’s latest on Google’s Privacy Sandbox sparks doubt among ad execs

In case it slipped under your radar — the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) dropped its latest opinions Friday afternoon on the merits and pitfalls of Google’s efforts to replace third-party cookies with its own alternatives in its Privacy Sandbox. Anytime this happens it’s a big deal. After all, the CMA is essentially the referee tasked with determining whether these efforts cross into anti-competitive territory. And from its latest take, it seems it’s not too impressed with Google’s moves.

In fact, the CMA has more concerns than ever. The latest report outlines over 79 of them — quite a leap from the 39 listed in its January update.

What’s got it riled up? Most of these concerns are just expansions of the ones the watchdog had all along. From suspicions that the sandbox will just keep Google on top of the ad game to questions about who’s going to be in charge once these alternatives are up and running — it’s the clearest signal yet from the watchdog that it believes there are some serious structural issues with the sandbox that aren’t even close to being fixed.

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