An important Chrome privacy feature has been delayed yet again

Update: April 24, 2024 (10:24 AM ET): We erroneously said that Google Chrome doesn’t allow you to block third-party cookies. The browser does, in fact, offer an option to let you block third-party cookies, although this isn’t enabled by default. We’ve updated our article accordingly and apologize for the error.

Original article: April 24, 2024 (4:21 AM ET): Google announced plans several years ago to ban third-party cookies in the Chrome browser. This ban was most recently supposed to come into effect in late 2024 as part of a so-called Privacy Sandbox initiative, but the company has now pushed this move back to 2025.

Google announced the delay in a blog post, citing feedback from various entities involved in the process:

We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA [The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority – ed] 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. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4.

The company added that it’s now aiming to ditch third-party cookies in Chrome in early 2025 if it can reach an agreement with regulators.

Either way, Google’s move to block third-party cookies has been coming for a long time. The firm first announced plans in 2020, with the stated aim of blocking these cookies by 2022 in the name of privacy. Google would go on to announce a delay to H2 2023 before confirming another delay to H2 2024.

Google did, however, start testing a so-called Tracking Protection feature in Chrome in early January. The feature, which was enabled by default as part of the test, sees websites being blocked from accessing third-party cookies. Users could also temporarily re-enable third-party cookies for a website if it wasn’t working properly.

It’s worth noting that Chrome wouldn’t be the only web browser to ban third-party cookies by default. Firefox, Brave Browser, and Safari offer this option by default today. Nevertheless, Google’s browser does contain a toggle to let you ban third-party cookies, so you might want to enable this setting if you’re concerned about privacy.