Google Delays Blocking 3rd-Party Cookies in Chrome Browser Until 2024

Google on Wednesday said it’s once again delaying its plans to
turn off third-party cookies in the Chrome web browser from late
2023 to the second half of 2024.

“The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for
more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies
before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome,” Anthony Chavez,
vice president of Privacy Sandbox, said^[1].

In keeping this in mind, the internet and ad tech giant said
it’s taking a “deliberate approach” and extending the testing window^[2] for its ongoing Privacy
Sandbox initiatives prior to phasing out third-party cookies.

Privacy Sandbox is Google’s umbrella term for a set of
technologies that aim to improve users’ privacy across the web and
Android by limiting cross-site and cross-app tracking and offering
improved, safer alternatives to serve interest-based ads.

While Google had originally planned to roll out the feature in
early 2022, it revised^[3]
the timeline in June 2021, pushing its proposal to transition from
third-party cookies over a three-month period, starting in mid-2023
and ending in late 2023.

“It’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem
to get this right,” the company noted at the time.

The second extension comes as Google announced Topics API^[4]
as a replacement for FLoC (short for Federated Learning of Cohorts)
in January 2022, following it up with a developer preview^[5]
of Privacy Sandbox for Android^[6] in May.

In February 2022, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority
(CMA) formally accepted commitments from Google over how it
develops the technology, pointing out the need to develop Privacy
Sandbox such that it promotes competition and supports publishers
to raise revenue from ads while also safeguarding consumer
privacy.

Under the new plan, Privacy Sandbox trials are expected to be
expanded to users globally next month, with the number of users
included in the tests ramped up throughout the rest of the year and
into 2023.

Google also emphasized that users will be shown a prompt^[7]
to manage their participation, adding it intends to make the APIs
generally available by Q3 2023, with third-party cookie support
tentatively dropped in H2 2024.

The CMA, for its part, acknowledged^[8]
today that it’s aware of “alternative proposals being developed by
third-parties,” and that it’s “working with the [Information
Commissioner’s Office] to better understand their viability and
likely impacts.”