I have what I think is a somewhat clear perspective on the issue of tracking cookies, because I have been on both sides of this issue “in the trenches.” My observation has been that companies really cannot choose to not track as a larger entity, because systemically they do not trust their own employees to make good decisions.
What I mean by this is that tracking in web properties is a joint decision (in most tech companies anyway) between Marketing, Legal, and Product as functions and executive leadership overall. This is actually a “big” decision, because it’s a binary decision that guides future trajectory.
Companies can choose to:
A. Make decisions about where to expend resources on ads, product feature development, localization, accessibility, et al on web properties based entirely on the “gut check” of their employees in each function and trust the outcomes.
B. Carefully measure and track everything so that decisions are supported by data and results are tracked, simplifying decision making and reducing the potential bias of employees and eliminating the need to trust employees to make good decisions and being able to validate outcomes.
If your product /is/ a web-app, the impact becomes even more pronounced.
At the end of the day, the only way to get an organization to give up tracking is to directly force the issue in the law or solve the underlying issues that create a trust gap and competency gap within large organizations. I think the latter is likely impossible to solve, so the former is the only option. In line with the banality of evil, companies are not maliciously deciding to track you, if there is any malice here its towards their own employees down the line, who aren’t or can’t be trusted to do their jobs without tracking.
Because Option B is the only likely option here, the net effect of the law as it stands today is to have a cookie banner everywhere. There’s literally a SaaS called Cookie Law that helps companies comply with these rules.