Security News > 2024 > July > Google's plan to drop third-party cookies in Chrome crumbles

Google no longer intends to drop support for third-party cookies - the online identifiers used by the ad industry to track people and target them with ads based on their online activities.

The Privacy Sandbox - a suite of APIs for notionally privacy-protecting online ad delivery and analytics - will co-exist with third-party cookies in Chrome for the foreseeable future.

Instead of phasing out third-party cookie support in the Chrome browser next year - subject to testing that started in January - Google intends to let Chrome users choose whether to play in its Privacy Sandbox, or in the adjacent land of data surveillance where third-party cookies support all manner of information gathering.

Google described its goal for the Privacy Sandbox years ago, in different terms: "We want to find a solution that both really protects user privacy and also helps content remain freely accessible on the web," claimed Justin Schuh, then the director of engineering for Chrome.

Google began working on its Privacy Sandbox project in 2019, around the time Apple and Mozilla committed to protecting users against trackers and began blocking third-party cookies by default.

Technical setbacks and regulatory pressure led Google to delay its plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/google_cookies_third_party_continue/