Google is once again delaying the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome. The browser will fully support the tracking technology until the second half of 2024, ie said Google on Wednesday.
In 2021, Google initially committed to ending support for third-party cookies in the Chrome browser in 2022. The commitment came two years after Google began working on a project “privacy sandbox” for Chrome.
In a company blog post Wednesday, Google's vice president of Privacy Sandbox, Anthony Chavez, said the company has taken a "deliberate approach to change from third party cookies".
"The most consistent feedback we've received is that more time is needed to evaluate and test new Privacy Sandbox technologies before removing third-party cookies in Chrome."
Google has reportedly been preparing some new technology for years in response to growing consumer privacy concerns.
It is now known that the majority of businesses use third-party cookies and aggregators data to evaluate the behavior of their users in many areas. This effort, however, clearly works at the expense of internet users' privacy. Consequently, companies such as Google and Apple began to restrict the use of third-party cookies.
Google's first attempt to replace the cookie third party was with its own technology, called flock. This particular effort was greeted warmly by some, and very cautiously by others. In the end all the big companies started criticizing the upcoming technology (1,2,3,4). Given this poor reception, Google later stated that Chrome would continue to support third-party cookies until at least mid-2023.
Then, in January of this year, he released the Topics API, which is made to track them users anonymous while still providing advertisers with enough data for interest-based advertising.
Beginning in early August, Privacy Sandbox testing will expand to millions of users worldwide. Google will gradually increase the population of people testing its new technology throughout the rest of the year and into 2023.
The company expects the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be released and available to everyone in Chrome by the third quarter of 2023. It will then begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome during the second half of 2024.
