Google backtracks on Chrome's biggest privacy promise

Third-party cookies make targeted advertising on the modern web possible. Support for them allows advertisers to track your online movements across sites, keeping you uniquely identified, and all the while gathering data about your interests. With the power they have, and the level of insight they’re able to offer into our behavior, it’s little wonder that they’ve long been a target of privacy advocates. Back in 2020, Google signaled its intent to overhaul Chrome’s approach to user privacy and do away with third-party cookies as we knew them. In the time since, an ETA for that move has been sliding further and further back, and today Google finally throws in the towel, conceding that third-party cookies are here to stay.

In an update shared on Google’s Privacy Sandbox blog, VP Anthony Chavez explains, “we are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.”

Google never wanted to outright kill advertising on the web (after all, how do you think Google makes its billions?), and instead was focused on trying to find a middle ground that preserved end-user privacy while still giving advertisers tools to efficiently target their efforts. In the years since this project got started, we’ve seen some interesting attempts at evolving cookies to a privacy-enhanced form, like the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) tracking system (which didn’t take too long for Google to abandon). And just earlier this year, we saw Google experiment with what seemed to be its largest-scale attempt yet at blocking third-party cookies by default. But based on the outcome we’re learning of today, that test can’t have gone great.

What’s next, if not the blanket deprecation of third-party cookies? Google isn’t being too explicit at the moment, but this “informed choice” business could be about more granular controls for who gets to see what kind of data. One upgrade on the horizon would bring IP-address anonymization to Incognito browsing. And for what it’s worth, you do have the ability to turn off third-party cookies right now; it’s just not something that’s enabled by default, and has the potential to break the way some sites work.

Google faces increasing regulatory scrutiny in markets abroad, and one of the driving forces behind the move to ditch these cookies has been the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Chavez says that Google will continue to consult the CMA as it moves forward with this new vision, but we’re curious if its dialed-back efforts will be enough to satisfy regulators.