Lou Montulli, the man who invented the cookie at age 23, wonders if he should have seen that it would transform into a key tool in the multibillion-dollar digital ad industry, Techonomy reports. Designed in 1994, the cookie was initially designed to help protect user privacy and security but has since morphed into a tool to monitor and track users. The article states Montulli and his team at Netscape had discovered ways to track users more broadly but that it was something they wanted to avoid. “Cookies were designed to prevent tracking, because only the originating website can set and receive that cookie,” Montulli said. “Companies figured out how to game the system.”
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