Google has revealed it will be delaying the phasing out of third-party cookies until the second half of 2024.
The tech giant explained that cookies are small pieces of data sent to your browser by a website you visit, this helps the website remember information about the visit that makes it easier to visit the site again.
Cookies are used for functionality, security, analytics, personalisation and advertising. This has been particularly useful for digital advertising, tracking user activity across different sites with targeted ads.
In 2021, the tech giant said it would phase out the use of cookies by early 2022. It was then announced it mid-2021 that it had been delayed to 2023, as reported by CNBC.
Google’s vice president of Privacy Sandbox, Anthony Chavez, said in a blog post that over the past several months developers have tested a number of trial versions of new Privacy Sandbox APIs in Chrome as part of the Privacy Sandbox initiative.
“Throughout this process, we’ve worked to refine our design proposals based on input from developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators via forums like the W3C, and earlier this year, we reached an agreement with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on how we develop and release the Privacy Sandbox in Chrome worldwide.
“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.
“This feedback aligns with our commitment to the CMA to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has sufficient time to adopt these new solutions.
“This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting.
“For these reasons, we are expanding the testing windows for the Privacy Sandbox APIs before we disable third-party cookies in Chrome,” Chavez added.
Chavez added that by the third quarter of 2023, Google expects the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome.
“As developers adopt these APIs, we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024,” he added.