Google is preparing to write a new chapter in the history of the so-called cookie deprecation: after the last update in which it had extended the deadline for eliminating third-party cookies on Chrome to 2025, here comes the U-turn, and in a post on its official blog it announces its intention no longer to eliminate third-party cookies, but instead to introduce a new browsing experience based on informed choices on the part of users.
The announcement comes directly from the words of Anthony Chavez, Vice President of Product Management at Google, regarding an update on Privacy Sandbox, Google’s ambitious project launched in 2019 to find an alternative solution to third-party cookies that could guarantee better privacy for the entire web and, at the same time, still allow effective tracking activities for advertising purposes.
The news has already been all around the web: Google’s new initiative is already on the table of many regulators such as the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and will soon involve industry stakeholders as well, but for the time being no details, let alone specifics on when it will be activated, have been provided.
Google Privacy Sandbox: the start of a new path
Google’s announcement that it would not permanently delete third-party cookies in Chrome was made official as a new path within the Google Privacy Sandbox project.
In the news note, Chavez emphasised the company’s willingness to continue with the development of the project itself: despite the most recent reservations expressed by regulators and some technical criticalities encountered, the Privacy Sandbox API expressed enormous potential.
The project is still a work in progress, requiring significant work on the part of many participants, and this is precisely why Google seems to have wanted to adopt a new approach focused on user choice.
Google Privacy Sandbox will move ahead regardless, there will be further developments, because as the note itself states, the goal remains wanting to invest in improving privacy and usefulness.
This change of course by Google, read also in the light of the continuous extensions, reflects the difficulties of balancing different needs and interests, users on the one hand, and advertisers and publishers on the other.
No end can yet be put to this story full of twists and turns, the future is still to be written.
If the advertising world can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for the moment, it remains to be seen how the Sandbox project will evolve and what scenarios will open up if users choose not to accept cookies.
