Google postpones blocking third-party cookies in Chrome again until 2024

Google has again delayed blocking third-party cookies in Chrome, giving publishers, developers, and advertisers more room to innovate for an anti-tracking and privacy-friendly digital ecosystem.

In 2020, the web giant announced its Privacy Sandbox initiative 2020. Google wanted to make the tracking cookies mainly issued by ad servers obsolete by creating a virtual space where useful information for banner customization would be collected by 2022, but the project was eventually delayed until 2023 to give Google more time to find alternatives.

This extra time obviously won’t have been long enough, as Google just announced another postponement. Finally, the company will not put an end of support for third-party cookies by at least the second half of 2024.

Google postpones the end of cookies in Chrome

Google has been working on this for years to remove third-party cookies in response to Growing Consumer Concerns About Privacy. Companies have long relied on cookies and third-party data aggregators to measure their users’ behavior across multiple domains.

However, this has clearly come at the expense of customer privacy. The giant must therefore determine how to protect users while also making website publishers money. The company expects the Privacy Sandbox APIs to launch in Q3 2023 and be generally available in Chrome. Phase out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.

“The most consistent feedback we’ve received is that more time is needed to evaluate and test new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome,” said Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google. “This feedback is consistent with our commitment to the AMC (UK Competition and Markets Authority) to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective privacy-preserving technologies and that the industry has ample time to adopt these new solutions.”