Since Google is so keen on improving the speed of the internet (and good for them for that) I'm looking forward to the day when they'll only use one cookie for all their tracking (if that's even possible). GA is, by Google's standards, a speed hog right now, and Page speed always complains about it ...
Just wondering: Why doesn't a webserver encrypt the cookie value with a server-side key? This way, the information in the cookie (timestamps, pageviews, number of sessions etc.) can be safe from wireshark sniffers.