To be clear, the outcome quoted above (Privacy Sandbox, no 3P cookies, ~20% reduction in ad revenue) is what Google wanted but regulators (spurred on by the ad industry) wouldn't let them have.
I agree Google needs an eye kept on them, but unfortunately the people doing that are looking out for the interests of other ad providers, not the public.
Increased demand for privacy, which has already led competing browsers to kill 3P cookies.
Note that Google wasn't willing to kill 3P cookies without providing Privacy Sandbox an an alternative, less privacy-invasive, way for publishers to target ads. Without Privacy Sandbox, the reduction in revenue is even more severe:
> we observed that removing third-party cookies without enabling Privacy Sandbox led to -34% programmatic revenue for publishers on Google Ad Manager and -21% programmatic revenue for publishers on Google AdSense. [https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/15189422]
Also note that the revenue being talked about is for publishers using Google Ad Manager and Google AdSense. Google gets a cut of that, but it's not as significant as the revenue from contextual ads they show on search results.
There's literally no competition: around 80% browsers market share belongs to Chromium-based ones. Whatever Google decides in Chromium will be delivered in the next update to rule 80% of the market.
Or maybe it was always a joke that people took seriously? What about Dont Be Evil was guaranteed to render different results than Microsoft besides passionate speeches? The motto should have been “Complexity Shift Evil” or “Evil Differently”.
An unnamed experience to replace a bad policy seems like the kind of thing you state when a project has failed and is winding down.
I agree that Google needs an eye kept on them though. They are never to be trusted.