On Saturday, the EU Cookie Directive goes into effect. It’s a European Union law governing the opting in and out of website cookies. The law was ratified in the name of privacy, but, the impact on the digital industry will be immense and, possibly, damaging.

Essentially, by damaging, analysts mean a possible step back in time with respect to your browsing experience.

Ad Age has a good definition of how the process will work:

In practical terms, the EU law will mean that every website you visit in the UK and Ireland will prompt you to opt-in to one of four types of cookies upon arrival at the site. It also means that for the rest of the EU countries there will be the same prompt, but one that allows you to opt out instead of opting in.

So, what will happen? What will happen, is that one is almost certain to have poorer brand experiences online.

Customer experiences as a whole won’t be the same, and digital advertising and marketing, as we know it, will change. Quality of the web experience will almost certainly take a dive.

As Shaina Boone bluntly states:

Basically, everything that makes the web more enjoyable and efficient and easier to use will be gone.

She goes on to say that websites will become “dumb again.”

For instance, Amazon’s famed one-click experience will have to be replaced by 15 clicks because the website won’t know what you like anymore. Google searches will give you results for the wrong city, and stuff that has little to do with what you actually wanted to know.

While the law is a great move for privacy, it has failed in respect of considering the impact that this will have on the web experience industry.

[Source: AdAge]