Security News > 2021 > June > Google Extends Support for Tracking Party Cookies Until 2023
The revised timelines comes close on the heels of a fresh regulatory setback in the European Union, after the European Commission opened a wide-ranging investigation into Google's digital advertising business to examine its "Plans to prohibit the placement of third party 'cookies' on Chrome and replace them with the 'Privacy Sandbox' set of tools," and assess its "Effects on online display advertising and online display advertising intermediation markets."
Third-party tracking cookies have emerged as a point of privacy concern as the technology enables marketers and ad platforms to monitor user activity online as they hop from one website to the other for purposes of behavioral targeting.
Announced in January 2020, Google's Privacy Sandbox aims to retire support for third-party cookies in Chrome with an alternative tool called Federated Learning of Cohorts that combines aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing, and other privacy-preserving technologies to classify users into cohorts based on their interests, which can then be used by the ad tech industry to tailor ads.
The company's ad tech overhaul has run into a number of potential concerns, with Mozilla noting that "The current design has a number of privacy properties that could create significant risks if it were to be widely deployed in its current form." The Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a "Terrible idea" that creates new privacy risks.
Google is in an unenviable position of having to balance demands for stronger user-privacy protections vis-à-vis its dominant role in multiple businesses - search, ad tech, and web browser - in the process, pitting these conflicting incentives against one other, and drawing the ire of privacy advocates, regulators, publishers, and advertisers alike.
"We believe that the Privacy Sandbox will provide the best privacy protections for everyone. By ensuring that the ecosystem can support their businesses without tracking individuals across the web, we can all ensure that free access to content continues," Goel said.