Google has once again postponed the blocking of third-party cookies on Chrome, giving publishers, developers and advertisers more leeway to innovate for an anti-tracking and privacy-friendly digital ecosystem.
In 2020, the web giant announced its Privacy Sandbox initiative in 2020. Google wanted make obsolete the tracking cookies issued mainly by advertising servers by creating a virtual space where useful information for customizing banners would be gathered by 2022, but the project was finally postponed to 2023 to give Google more time to find alternatives.
This additional time will obviously not have been long enough, since Google has just announced a new postponement. Finally, the company will not put ending support for third-party cookies by at least the second half of 2024.
Google delays the end of cookies in Chrome
Google has been working on this for years now to remove third-party cookies in response to growing consumer concerns about privacy. Companies have long relied on cookies and third-party data aggregators to gauge their users’ behavior across multiple domains.
However, this has clearly come at the expense of customer privacy. The giant must therefore determine how to protect users while allowing website publishers to make money. The company expects the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome in Q3 2023. It will then begin to Phase out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.
” The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome said Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google. ” This feedback aligns with our commitment to the AMC (UK Competition and Markets Authority) to ensure the Privacy Sandbox provides effective life preserving technologies private sector and that the sector has enough time to adopt these new solutions “.