Would it be possible to store cookies on the cloud?

Question

Would it be possible to store cookies in something like a google account when browsing using google chrome(just an example)? Wouldn't this make some aspects of searching the web much safer? Why are we still storing cookies on the device?

Answer 1

The article on HTTP cookies contains useful information on their role/purpose in HTTP.

A cookie .. is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while the user is browsing that website. Every time the user loads the website, the browser sends the cookie back to the server to notify the website of the user's previous activity. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information [between otherwise stateless HTTP requests] ..

In particular, cookies are only/primarily useful as they are because they are stored on the device and because they are sent with the appropriate requests. Thus the entire concept of "storing cookies on the cloud" is unrelated to the primary benefit/use of cookies in the first place!

However, cookies are generally to be considered insecure and should not be used to store sensitive information - this is why cookies are often coupled with sessions and other server-side data access mechanisms which [securely] store information on the server.