Google’s vice president, responsible for the Privacy Sandbox project, recently announced the cancellation of plans to remove support for third-party cookies in the Chrome browser. Third-party cookies are commonly used to track user activity across different websites by advertising networks, web analytics tools, and other systems. Instead of completely eliminating third-party cookies, Chrome will introduce a new interface that allows users to decide whether to block these cookies independently, giving them the flexibility to enable or disable this feature at any time. Specific details about the implementation of this new approach have not been revealed yet.
Mozilla’s Firefox 69 already includes default blocking of third-party cookies, implemented in 2019, while Safari also introduced default cookie blocking around the same time. Google initially announced plans to stop supporting third-party cookies in 2020, with the intention to phase out this support by 2022. However, the timeline was later extended to mid-2023, then postponed again to the fourth quarter of 2024, before ultimately scrapping the plan altogether.
The decision to cancel the third-party cookie support plan was made due to concerns about its negative impact on the current online advertising ecosystem, which allows website creators to offer content for free. Despite Google’s extensive efforts to develop new specialized APIs as alternatives to cookie tracking, the internet advertising industry was not sufficiently prepared to transition away from this traditional method. Some of the proposed alternatives include Federal Credential Management (FedCM), Private State Tokens, Topics, and Protected Audience, designed to meet users’ privacy needs while still enabling effective audience targeting and analysis.