Correct me if I'm wrong (because I don't live in the EU and can't verify this), but to comply with the cookie law websites started just displaying "we use cookies" in the header somewhere and didn't actually change anything. Meaning its the same as browsing the internet everywhere else you just get told that this is happening.
No correction, that is what happened. But I don't know if that's because the law was naively constructed, naively interpreted or willfully misinterpreted because it's easier to implement.