Companies did that and thoughtless website owners, small and large, who decided that it is better to collect arbitrary data, even if they have no capacity to convert it into information.
The solution to get rid of cookie banners, as it was intended, is super simple: only use cookies if absolutely necessary.
It was and is a blatant misuse. The website owners all have a choice: shift the responsibility from themselves to the users and bugger them with endless pop ups, collect the data and don’t give a shit about user experience. Or, just don’t use cookies for a change.
And look which decision they all made.
A few notable examples do exist: https://fabiensanglard.net/ No popups, no banner, nothing. He just don’t collect anything, thus, no need for a cookie banner.
The mistake the EU made was to not foresee the madness used to make these decisions.
I’ll give you that it was an ugly, ugly outcome. :(
It's not madness, it's a totally predictable response, and all web users pay the price for the EC's lack of foresight every day. That they didn't foresee it should cause us to question their ability to foresee the downstream effects of all their other planned regulations.
1. Consent to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous and as easy to withdraw as to give 2. High penalties for failure to comply (€20 million or 4 % of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher)
Compliance is tricky and mistakes are costly. A pop-up banner is the easiest off-the-shelf solution, and most site operators care about focusing on their actual business rather than compliance, so it's not surprising that they took this easy path.
If your model of the world or "image of humanity" can't predict an outcome like this, then maybe it's wrong.
How is "not selling user data to 2000+ 'partners'" tricky?
> most site operators care about focusing on their actual business
How is their business "send user's precise geolocation data to a third party that will keep that data for 10 years"?
Compliance with GDPR is trivial in 99% of cases