Hundreds of German publishers, including Axel Springer, say Google is breaking EU law with its move to phase out third-party cookies from Chrome by next year
Axel Springer among the media groups demanding that Brussels intervene on search giant's plan — Google is facing a fresh complaint …
Context & Ripple Effects
This complaint is the latest move in a decade-long campaign by German media against Google: the same publishers filed a lawsuit back in 2016 over receiving traffic without payment, and Germany's antitrust regulator later opened a probe into whether Google News Showcase terms imposed unreasonable conditions. Axel Springer's camp has also shown it will attack any platform that reshapes ad targeting on privacy grounds, having complained against Apple's iPhone privacy changes in 2021.
What changed here is the target: rather than payments or licensing terms, hundreds of publishers are now arguing that Chrome itself — the browser through which most of their ad revenue is tracked — is being restructured in a way they say breaches EU law, demanding Brussels intervene before the 2023 deadline.
First-order effects
- Brussels comes under direct pressure to open proceedings against Google's cookie phase-out, adding a new front to its existing scrutiny of the company's ad practices.
- Advertisers and publishers dependent on third-party cookies for targeting face a compressed timeline to find alternatives, with their trade groups now lobbying rather than adapting.
Second-order effects
- The complaint template spreads fast: weeks later the European Publishers Council, whose members include News UK, filed its own EU antitrust complaint against Google's ad practices, turning a national grievance into a coordinated European one.
- Google's rivals and partners in the ad stack gain an argument that browser-level control of identity data is a competition issue, not just a privacy feature — echoing how the publishers framed Apple's iPhone changes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, browser and OS vendors' unilateral privacy decisions become de facto regulated infrastructure in Europe, forcing platform owners to negotiate identity and monetization terms with the content industry.
- The escalation path is already visible: what began as complaints culminated in Axel Springer and 31 other media groups pursuing a $2.3B damages lawsuit against Google's digital ad practices, shifting the fight from regulators to courts.
The trend: European publishers are converting long-running grievances over platform-controlled advertising infrastructure into a sustained legal campaign that treats browsers and operating systems as antitrust battlegrounds.