You know that annoying prompt asking you to “accept” or “reject” third-party cookies from most websites? Well, it will be a thing of a past for Google Chrome thanks to their Privacy Sandbox initiative, but they will only remove the third-party cookies in 2023—a year later than they originally intended.
Google’s original plan was to remove them in early 2022. However, they announced that third-party cookies will be phased out in stages over a three month period finishing in late 2023.
Basically, the platform wants to have certain “key technologies” in place by the end of next year. These key technologies include “widely disabled FLoC”—which is an algorithm that allows ad selection without sharing individuals’ browsing behaviour, as well as other APIs driven by privacy.
“We as an industry can help ensure that cookies are not replaced with alternative forms of individual tracking, and discourage the rise of covert approaches like fingerprinting,” Google continued.
Chrome will be phasing out support for third party cookies in two stages:
- Stage 1 (Starting late-2022): Once testing is complete and APIs are launched in Chrome, Google will announce the start of stage 1. During stage 1, publishers and the advertising industry will have time to migrate their services. This stage is expected to last for nine months.
- Stage 2 (Starting mid-2023): Chrome will phase out support for third-party cookies over a three month period finishing in late 2023.
“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,” wrote Google.
Google has been making their money off things like Adsense and advertising services, which go hand-in-hand with user tracking and data collection. Privacy Sandbox has just been one of their recent initiatives to associate their brand name with privacy awareness—which is something that Apple has done a lot quicker.
