Chrome has finally announced plans to kill third-party cookies. It’s been almost four years since third-party cookies were disabled in Firefox and Safari, but Google, one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, has been slow to kill the tracking cookie. Ad companies use third-party cookies to track users across the web, and this web activity is used to show users relevant ads. Now that Google’s alternative ad tracking system, the Privacy Sandbox, has been launched in Chrome, it’s finally ready to kill off the previous form of ad tracking. The new timeline for killing third-party cookies is the second half of 2024.
Google’s blog post calls the rollout “Tracking Protection” and says the first tests will begin on 4 January, with 1 percent of Chrome users getting the feature. By the second half of 2024, the rollout should hit everyone on desktop Chrome and Android (Chrome on iOS is just a reskinned Safari and doesn’t apply). The rollout comes with some new UI bits for Chrome, with Google saying: “If a site doesn’t work without third-party cookies, and Chrome notices you’re having trouble – like when you refresh a page multiple times – we’ll prompt you with an option to temporarily re-enable third-party cookies for that site from the eye icon on the right side of your address bar.” Given that other browsers have been doing this for four years, it’s hard to imagine that many web admins won’t be ready for this.
Google says the rollout is “subject to the resolution of any remaining competition concerns from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority”. Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox switch represents the world’s most popular browser (Google Chrome) integrating with the web’s largest advertising platform (Google Ads) and shutting down alternative tracking methods used by rival ad companies. So some regulators are naturally interested in the whole process.
Google says its decision to offer this privacy feature four years after its competitors is a “responsible approach” to phasing out third-party cookies. That responsibility seems to be primarily a responsibility to Google’s shareholders, since turning off tracking cookies was previously seen as an attack on Google’s business model. Google’s position as the world’s largest browser vendor allowed it to delay the death of tracking cookies long enough to create an alternative tracking system, which was launched in Chrome earlier this year. With the advertising business secured, it’s now acceptable to phase out cookies. So far, everything is going according to plan.
