After four years of trying to end third-party cookies on Chrome, Google is abandoning its plan. Instead, a new choice system is expected to help manage online tracking.
Against all expectations, Google has abandoned its plan to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser, those famous little files stored on devices (computers, smartphones, etc.) by web browsers when you browse websites. Initially planned for 2022, this removal was postponed several times following virulent criticism from the advertising industry and regulatory issues. The Mountain View firm finally capitulated and, in a blog post published on July 22, 2024it announces that it will not remove third-party cookies from Chrome. Instead, it intends to implement “a new approach […] which will allow everyone to make an informed decision that will apply to all of their web browsing.”.
End of third-party cookies: Google abandons its Privacy Sandbox
If cookies often have a bad reputation, it is because some contribute to tracking Internet users. This is the case of “third-party” cookies, which are deposited by domains other than that of the visited site and which allow third parties (other sites, therefore) to follow the Internet user from site to site, and to collect or deduce personal information from their visits (age, place of residence, consumption habits, etc.). This valuable information is then used to create and enrich the Internet user’s profile, which makes it possible to offer them advertisements likely to interest them, and therefore to push them to buy. A practice that can be particularly intrusive and annoying.
To get around this system, Google relied on its Privacy Sandbox, a tool that would eventually replace the use of third-party cookies for targeting Internet users’ advertising (see our article). The APIs were deployed gradually so that the company could monitor the procedure and quickly react in the event of a problem. But this alternative did not convince everyone…
End of third-party cookies: the risk of a Google monopoly
Regulators, starting with the UK’s Competition Authority (CMA), have strongly opposed the change, fearing that it would limit competition in the digital advertising sector by favoring Google’s solutions. Because in reality, private data does not really benefit from better confidentiality, it simply changes its manager. With its Privacy Sandbox, Google becomes the only possible intermediary between Chrome users.
The advantage is twofold for the Mountain View firm. Indeed, it allows it to monetize more data from advertisers, while strengthening its control and monopoly in the management and processing of private data. Suffice to say that, for a company whose nearly 80% of its revenue comes from advertising, which monopolizes many web technologies and which uses its predominance to push its services to Internet users – attracting the wrath of the authorities on this subject – the Privacy Sandbox is a golden tool!
End of third-party cookies: towards a system of “informed choice”
Faced with these pressures, Google has finally revised its strategy. Instead, the company plans to offer a system of “informed choice” for Internet users. Its exact form is still unknown, but it is supposed to leave it up to Internet users to accept or not the use of third-party cookies in Chrome.
This decision seems to have calmed the various competition authorities for the moment. The British CMA has already indicated that it “would look closely” Google’s new plans to determine whether they are compatible with a truly competitive approach to targeted advertising. But Google does not intend to abandon the Privacy Sandbox just yet and assures that these “privacy-friendly” alternatives will continue to be developed in order to offer advertisers less intrusive solutions than third-party cookies. Well, on paper…