It's about time ...

... somebody starts collecting all the dumb, funny, pointless cookie banners that the dumb / unfunny / pointless EU commission rule forces all the sites to create, and every single user to accept. Again and again and again.

The EU cookie directive is probably the main reason the British are leaving the EU. If you have to accept for every site you visit that it uses cookies (which makes perfect sense for everybody except EU bureaucrats) the urge to just leave grows. I believe the UK will save 1 billion a year in productive time gained by not having to click "yes I'm fine with you using cookies".

Interestingly, not every site is just copying a standard cookie banner. No, there are creative people out there, and they spend their time coming up with all kinds of different cookie banners.

Let's start with my favorite one (German, I'm afraid). The Postillion's banner.

I love a button that says: What do I care?

The joy of internationalization

The worst cookie banner of them all: pcmag.com (on my iPhone)

We learn: the translation to other languages (like German) often takes more space. And if you do it wrongly, all of a sudden there's no "I agree" button to be seen.

German can be tough to master

Okay, another german one.

I am not sure what bizarre combination of Google Translate and Italian creativity was at work here. Here's my best attempt at translating the warning above:

Caution! This page uses biscuits similarly and technologies. If you not over die browser - change settings, right you. Read more.

Okay, I got that it wrongly tried to translate Cookie, but why it muses about death in case I don't change settings is beyond me.

How to do it properly

BBC shows how to do a cookie banner properly. It takes about 10 minutes and the help of a lawyer to understand it.

I do not want to hit "find out more".

laut.de, the master of simplicity

I love this one.

English: "We use cookies". One link "why", one link "fine".

Nice!

The most epic fail

... is the site of the EU Commission itself.

That's a screenshot of this site, http://ec.europa.eu

(Please note: I had posted this in 2016, probably by now they get it.)

Notice what's missing here?

If you now conclude that a) they have created the cookie directive and b) they don't show a cookie banner must mean that they are good citicens and don't use cookies, you're wrong. Here's what my browser shows:

You need a special kind of thinking to create a legislation that annoys every web site hoster and every web site user, and to not fulfil it yourself.

Good job, EU commission!

BTW they even have a special site on their cookie directive: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm

This site publishes a "cookie consent kit" for web site authors to download.

And it doesn't show a cookie banner as well, although it creates yet another cookie.

Why don't I see this wonderful button more often?

Almost philosophical, and really the right button for about every situation.

Nice ASCII art!

The coolest cookie consent page is from IntelliJ IDEA - very nice ASCII DOS look even with [Y]es and [N]o links :-)

Cookies for you

German pet shop Fressnapf has a creative subject (these cookies are for you, not for your darling.

Then it gets down to the boring facts.