Google has officially scrapped its plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome. The company had been dragging its feet for years on its plan to stop supporting the small text snippets that websites you visit send to the browser. Now, it has finally admitted that it won’t be making any changes.
Google first talked about “phasing out support” for third-party cookies in Chrome back in 2020. It also announced that it would be getting rid of cross-page tracking IDs, fingerprinting, and other similar methods.
This proposal was intended to end in 2022. That is, the browser would gradually get rid of third-party cookies and other things until the plan was completed two years after the announcement. However, they postponed the end to 2023, and then to 2024. The last news we had on the subject was that they planned to deactivate them in 2025.
The Mountain View company wanted to replace third-party cookies with privacy-conscious alternatives. In this way, they hoped that Google Chrome would be able to continue with the web’s advertising model without users worrying so much about where their data went. But this will not be the case in the end, as they have decided to abandon the initiative.
Google Chrome will provide more information about cookies
Instead of saying goodbye to third-party cookies, Google has detailed that it will provide users with more information about this support. According to the company in a press release, it will “introduce a new experience in Chrome that allows people to make an informed decision that applies to all their web browsing.”
The brand explained that it had taken this decision because doing away with third-party cookies would have required “significant work on the part of many participants.” Proof of this are all the delays that have occurred since the project was abandoned.
Google has not been sitting on its hands yet and has continued to try to find a substitute for third-party cookies. In January, the company launched its “Tracking Protection” system in beta, which sought to allow Internet users to browse “with more privacy.”
Those who were able to test out “Tracking Protection” were told that they were “among the first to experiment” with this tool. It limited “the use of third-party cookies by sites to track you as you browse.” But unfortunately, the trials have not been as fruitful as Google had hoped and it has decided to back off.
Google Chrome privacy changes that are coming
While Google is not moving ahead with removing third-party cookies from Chrome, there are other proposals that protect user privacy that are still being developed. For example, “additional privacy controls” for incognito mode with ID Protection.
As Google developers clarify, “ID Protection proposes anonymize the user’s IP addressto help protect it from being used by third parties identified as potentially tracking users’ IP addresses across websites.” This tool will feature a privacy proxy that “anonymizes qualified traffic” and will arrive as a default setting before 2025.
The development, testing and adoption of Privacy Sandbox was key to the idea of eliminating third-party cookies. With this technology, they were looking for innovative solutions where online privacy and maintaining an ad-supported Internet were compatible. Although they have abandoned their initial plan, they assure that they will continue to make the Privacy Sandbox APIs available and invest in them “to further improve privacy and utility.”
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), publishers, web developers, standards groups, civil society, advertising industry players… They had all been pushing ahead with the plan to say goodbye to third-party cookies in Google Chrome. Now that we know this will not be the case, the firm clarifies that its team is discussing the new path they have taken with regulators.
