Episode Details

Third-party cookies are being phased out across every major browser, but most people misunderstand what's actually changing. This episode goes back to 1994 — when a 23-year-old engineer at Netscape needed to solve the shopping cart problem — and traces how cookies evolved from a three-page spec into the foundation of modern web sessions. We explain why your shopping cart follows you across devices (spoiler: it's not the cookie), how third-party tracking actually works, and what the Privacy Sandbox replaces. Plus: why the death of third-party cookies is pushing the web toward authenticated identity, and what that means for privacy.