I personally don't consider tracking cookies to be a significant privacy concern, although in principle the potential for abuse cannot be completely ruled out.
It should be kept in mind that tracking cookies do NOT provide the capability of recording ALL website visits from the particular browser on the particular computer. They just provide the capability of recording visits to sites that subscribe to the particular cookie.
In this case I would expect that to mean sites which use Google's advertising services to place third-party ads on their sites. The tracking cookie would allow them to avoid repetitious placement of the same ads for a given user, and to target selection of the ads based on what other sites the user has visited that also use Google's ad services.
Regards,
-- Al
It should be kept in mind that tracking cookies do NOT provide the capability of recording ALL website visits from the particular browser on the particular computer. They just provide the capability of recording visits to sites that subscribe to the particular cookie.
In this case I would expect that to mean sites which use Google's advertising services to place third-party ads on their sites. The tracking cookie would allow them to avoid repetitious placement of the same ads for a given user, and to target selection of the ads based on what other sites the user has visited that also use Google's ad services.
Regards,
-- Al