Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread.

Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner.

There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident that losing time over privacy is so horrible. In fact, when designing a law that enhances consumer rights through informed consent, it is inevitable that this imposes additional time spent on thinking, considering and acting.

It's the whole point, folks! You cannot have an informed case-by-case decision without spending time.

What I find funny about the whole thing is that the grand majority of companies with cookie banners are not implementing them correctly, and therefore are still in breach of the law.

I see constantly banners on sites that set tracking cookies by default, and delete them if you reject them in the banner (or even worse, not delete them at all!) – this is not compliant as the cookies were set before consent was given

Also see banners where there is only a big "OK" button, with no visible option to reject, this is also not compliant!

One way to see it is that it's their way of passive-aggressive protest against a law they don't want. Maybe the aim was never to abide by the law, just to pretend and annoy people enough to draw them on your side.

A clear example of passive-aggressive protest was from Google, the removal of links to Google maps from the search results. Instead of providing a choice of multiple map providers, they just completely removed the links. To clarify: I'm in Europe (France).