Google has pushed back its plan to stop using third-party cookies in Chrome until 2025, saying that it needs to give regulators more time.
On Tuesday, before its Q1 2023 report, the company wrote about this on its blog. Google said it is still working on the plan with the ad industry and officials. For example, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking into how it does business.
Cookies are small pieces of information that a website sends to a user’s computer. They are often used to track what websites people visit so that advertisers can show you more relevant ads. Chrome browser users should be able to keep their data private if third-party cookies are blocked.
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As part of the Privacy Sandbox effort, Google has talked with publishers, marketers, and regulators about its plan to replace cookies. Marketers use cookies to keep track of people’s online activities and show them more relevant ads.
Why can’t Chrome turn off cookies in Q4?
“We recognise that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators, and developers,” the company said, offering an update on the plan to phase out cookies by Q4 of this year. “We will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem,” the company added.
“It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence, including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. We have decided not to finish deprecating third-party cookies in the second half of Q4 due to these two critical factors.
“We hope to finish working with the CMA and ICO this year. We plan to deprecate third-party cookies early next year if we can agree.”
Google’s past on cookies
With this new announcement, Google has moved back its original date from January 2020 for the third time. At the time, the tech giant said it would eliminate third-party cookies “within two years” to make the web safer for everyone.
In February of this year, the CMA told Google to stop getting rid of cookies until it could fix problems hurting competition.
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In particular, publishers and ad tech companies asked the CMA to investigate their worries that the Privacy Sandbox favours Google’s ad goods, especially Google Ad Manager, in the market.
Apple Inc. shook up the digital ad market in 2021 by making it harder for advertisers to access user data in its operating system. Google’s choice to phase out cookies is similar to that.
At the same time, Google began trying Chrome’s Tracking Protection feature at the beginning of January. As part of the test, the function was turned on by default and let users block and unblock third-party cookies.