Google’s plan to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser is struggling to materialize. Presented in 2020, it is slipping into 2025.
It was initially expected in 2022. It was then postponed to 2023, before being postponed to 2024. Finally, the killing of third-party cookies in the Chrome browser will clearly not occur before 2025. This is what learned the Wall Street Journal in its April 23 edition, citing the American company.
Cookies are files placed on the PC by the browser. Their missions are diverse: they can recognize a visitor, preventing them from having to reconnect to a site each time. They can also be used for advertising and tracking (we sometimes speak of trackers). They can come from third parties, hence the name.
This revised schedule is the result of long-standing differences between the advertising industry, regulators and developers, according to the Mountain View firm. For Google, which set itself the goal of removing third-party cookies from Chrome in 2020, the path is proving more difficult than expected. Four years later, the breakup has not happened.
The internet giant is not at the end of its troubles. It will also have to obtain the green light from regulators, from the European Commission to national authorities, which is not certain. Consequently, the horizon that Google had set for itself in the latest news – a shutdown in the second half of 2024 – no longer appears tenable.
Tens of millions of Internet users affected
The very strong attention received by Google on the cessation of third-party cookies is due to the fact that the web browser concerned, Chrome, is the most used in the world. Its market share is around 65%. In fact, the slightest change impacts tens of millions of people around the globe.
The authorities’ eye is all the more attentive as Google also has an economic model that is extremely dependent on advertising. The very large part of the turnover of its parent company, Alphabet, comes from the advertising sector. Its other sources of income are, in comparison, quite marginal.
For advertisers, the subject is therefore very sensitive, because Chrome is in fact an essential point of passage for reaching Internet users and offering them targeted advertising. Instead, however, Google worked to offer an alternative mechanism, supposed to allow targeted advertising, but without tracking Internet users.
Google initially explored a first technical concept, FLoC, but encountered frank hostility. Since then, the company has focused on another project to develop targeted advertising without cookies and without tracking: the Privacy Sandbox. This device is still in progress and trials were announced at the beginning of the year.
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