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Google has pushed back its plans to phase out third-party cookies until at least early 2025 amid pressure from industry, regulators and developers.
Google has once again postponed its plans to ban third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, as it faces concerns from both businesses and regulators.
The tech giant’s plan to cut third-party cookies from Chrome was originally set to begin in 2022, but was pushed back to 2023 after a mixed response to its alternative proposals. The timeframe was eventually changed to 2024, but this is being pushed back once again to at least early 2025.
Google said there are “ongoing challenges” related to “reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers”. The company also noted issues from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
“It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June,” Google said. “Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4.”
The general pushback against a ban of third-party cookies stems from their importance for advertisers. These lines of code are stored in a user’s browser to track browsing activity and informs what types of ads are displayed to a user. They have been a critical part of the online ad industry’s business, but concerns exist about user privacy.
As an alternative to third-party cookies, Google has developed the Privacy Sandbox, which is designed to let users customise the type of ads they see by sharing the topics they’re interested in and what relevance and measurement APIs they want enabled on their browser.
Google has been testing its Privacy Sandbox technologies for years and released a trial of it in a stable state last year, to let users simulate the long-awaited cookie ban.
A survey from the Compliance Institute in 2022 suggested that 32pc of Irish organisations are not prepared at all for a cookie-less future. Last December, a survey from Optimizely claimed 63pc of marketers in the UK have no clear strategy for a cookie-less future, though this survey only contained 100 marketing professionals.
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