I guess there are many ways of looking at this, but yes there should be an option to turn it off and on, technically there is, but not easy to find for the average user.
So yes I believe it will hurt many newbies, I allways delete my cookies after surfing, but how many people know how to do this.
So I guess only time will tell what the long term affects will be but I do believe longer term search keywords will be a big player in higher ranking in the future.
Rod