In a surprising change of direction, Google has decided not to get rid of third-party cookie support in Chrome. The cookies are small text files with information, set by websites and advertisers, and can be used to track users across the internet for personalisation and other purposes, some of which violate user privacy.
Google's vice president of its Privacy Sandbox initiative, Anthony Chavez, announced the change this week. Chavez used very careful language that suggests "everyone involved in online advertising" had resisted the effort to ditch third-party cookies.
Regulators worldwide had also been cold on third-party cookies going in Chrome, the world's most popular web browser.
Chavez mentioned "feedback from a variety of stakeholders" that include British watchdogs the Competition and Markets Authority and the Information Commissioner's Office as providing feedback on Google's effort to replace third-party cookies with application programming interfaces (APIs) under the Privacy Sandbox work.
Google had extended the grace period for deprecating third-party cookies, the most recent one being 60 days from 1 July this year.
The Privacy Sandbox initiative to remove third-party cookies, "to create technologies that both protect people's privacy online" while providing advertisers and web companies with the tools required to bring in revenue has been years in the making, but with slow progress.
In 2021 Google said more time was needed to phase out the cookies, which was originally set to happen from mid-2023 and be done over a three-month period. Again, Google referred to engagement with UK's CMA as the reason for the delay.
Now, Chavez said Google will bring in a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing; that choice can be adjusted at any time.
Chavez didn't outline what the new experience would look like, but said Google is discussing this new path with regulators and will engage with the industry over the rollout of the feature.
Meanwhile, Chavez said Google intends to continue to make the Privacy Sandbox APIs available for developers, and invest in them further to improve privacy and utility. Further privacy enhancements are also coming for Chrome, including the Internet Protocol (IP) address protection feature in Incognito mode to prevent tracking of users.
Due next year by default, IP Protection uses a two-hop privacy proxy that anonymises "qualifying" traffic; it hides users IP address from servers on the Internet, in a similar fashion to Apple's Hide My IP Address feature that's part of the iCloud+ subscription.
Apple is blocking third-party cookies in its Safari web browser by default, along with Mozilla with Firefox.
3 Comments
Its cost me a fortune in additional ad spend since they started to beta deprecate it. Today my ad costs went back to normal, praise the lord. We don't do anything creepy with the data other than a small amount of retargetting across channels based on folks expressed interest in our products and services; after a politely short period, the re-targetting ends - and the same would be true of most adverstisers - they obey the golden rule - they treat their prosects the way they would want to be treated...there has to be a better tool in Google's arsenal of knowing everything to target the real offenders.
I could be wrong but remarketing is using first-person cookies not third. You're using user data that you've collected on your own site and declaring in your TOS that you may use it for your own advertising purposes. This whole issue arose from companies collecting user details on their own sites and then selling that data to other advertisers. So instead of you remarketing to that audience you instead charge other business to also advertise to that same audience.
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