It's a technology that's been around basically as long as the Internet and I'm not.

Talking about the edible kind has fueled the rise of the online global ad business.

Here's a Facebook jumping in the after hours, up as much as 4% at one point, but all that could change.

Mm hmm.

When you go to a website, it can store information about your visit on your computer.

That's a cookie.

It contains a unique idea that the website can later use to identify you.

So that's how a site remembers your language preferences that you've logged onto something that you've put something in your cart That's a first party cookie.

And those aren't going anywhere like real cookies.

Internet cookies come in different flavors.

Enter third party cookies.

They come from sites you haven't visited directly, and they're the ones that are going away.

Third party cookies are far and away the most popular, the most widespread tracking technology on the Web, and they make it really easy for trackers to build up big, invasive profiles of users without their knowledge.

They work like this and add on a site will give you a cookie.

Then, if you go to a different site that uses the same ad server, it can match that third party cookie and learn more about as you visit more websites and more websites.

The information associated with that cookie grows so ad networks can build profiles of people and serve more targeted and more relevant ads based on those cookies.

So when you put an item in a shopping cart on Amazon, but don't buy it and then later see banner ads from the same product on a totally different site, that's a third party cookie.

That cookie driven ad model has enabled sites like Facebook and Google and CNN dot com to serve more effective and relevant ads and then offer their products for free.

It's formed the backbone for the online ad business, a business that is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

But now that business has to change, Safari and Firefox have already banned third party cookies, and now Google has announced it will phase them out of chrome over a two year period.

And even though Google is not being as strict as Apple and Brazil in its banned, its actions actually mattered the most.

That's because Chrome controls more than 60% of the browser market.

When Google moves, it matters.