Zoho’s Chief Strategy Officer, Vijay Sundaram, has decided to ban third-party cookies. The idea behind banning cookies collection is business growth should not come at the cost of the customer’s privacy. He believes that exponential growth can potentially result in conflicting models.
“What that means is that slows down your growth because you have obvious ways to add revenue stream … but what that winds up doing is something that lasts over a longer period of time,” he told ZDNet in an interview.
“You see a lot of technology companies today, and it’s not just the Googles of the world or the Facebooks of the world, and many technology companies, including Amazon and Microsoft and others that have an advertising model, however big or small it is,” he said.
“There is a fundamental conflict in that model because ad revenue and privacy are fundamentally at loggerheads — in a sense as the oil and water business — they just don’t mix.”
He believes that marketing should be treated as a tool. When people are unaware of the usage of their information, it raises a question on the morality of a company. The question here – is it okay to let go of their ethics and morals just to improve the company’s revenue.
“Third-party cookies are evil of the internet age that people are simply not aware of,” Sundaram said. “There’s a lot of value in collecting this data because there’s a presumption … that customer data is up and available for sale, despite all the regulatory regimes that are trying to clamp down on it.”
Zoho allows customers to use the product and won’t use their third-party cookies. The company isn’t invading user’s information as a matter of principle. It is taking a step forward and suggesting fellow companies to walk on the same footprint.