My Master thesis is finally done, I have a printed copy lying on the desk right next to me and a digital copy published here on this website. The long wait between December, when I sent the last draft to my supervisor, and a few days ago, when I received the final approval for my work, has been quite challenging. Not only was I seeing deadline after deadline pass me by, but I also worried that waiting for so long could render some of my work obsolete. The field of user tracking is ever changing and at the moment there is also noticeable motion towards more and stricter legislation regarding certain areas in the field. New (court) decisions are clarifying former grey areas every day, others are just pointing out things, which have been the case for some time but were widely ignored. Fortunately, after filling out countless forms and handing in way too many documents, I am now standing at the finish line. The final step - my defensio - is less than a month away. So at this point, I would like to take the time to thank a few people: 

Mr Matthias Fassl for his suggestions on relevant research; Mr Michael Langowski for proofreading; and the editorial staff of ".trend" magazine for their willingness to share their data on Austria’s Top 500 enterprises. Special thanks should be given to ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.iur. Markus Haslinger, my supervisor, for his professional guidance and constructive input during the planning and development of my work. I also wish to thank those members of the research community providing access to their work for free in their continuing bid to advance the availability of knowledge to their fellow researchers. I sincerely thank my parents for their continued support and encouragement throughout my study. An honorary mention should be given to my cat Pixel for constantly providing distractions and keeping me from finishing my thesis on time. Finally, I wish to thank the team at netidee for being so considerate whenever something did not entirely go according to plan (which happened more often than I feel comfortable to admit).

In the end everything takes a little longer than you anticipated, at university as well as later in life, and in hindsight it is always easy to say "I would have done things differently". If I am completely honest, I probably would not - some things in life just take their time and writing an academic thesis is definitely one of those things.