Oh crumbs! The four-year third-party cookie saga takes a new turn

Google will now not be phasing them out after all, despite announcing in January 2020 that the abolition would be completed before the end of 2021. Several postponements and revised deadlines followed thereafter as advertisers, their agencies, publishers and marketers pondered on a largely cookie-less future and its potential implications and solutions.

This week, though, Google threw a cat among the cookie pigeons by revealing, via a blog post from Anthony Chavez, Vice-President in charge of its Privacy Sandbox, that third-party cookies will remain on Chrome following feedback from industry stakeholders.

Google is continuing its search to find alternatives with better data-privacy standards, and says it is working closely with regulators in various countries to find solutions that will be acceptable to advertisers and marketers, as well as legislators and consumer-protection advocates.

“In light of this, we are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time,” Chavez writes in his blog post.

“As this moves forward, it remains important for developers to have privacy-preserving alternatives. We’ll continue to make the Privacy Sandbox APIs available and invest in them to further improve privacy and utility. We also intend to offer additional privacy controls, so we plan to introduce IP Protection into Chrome’s Incognito mode.”

The post is, however, short on specifics and timelines for this new approach.

Not too different from what Apple did

Comments Digiday, a trade publication for online media: “If this does pan out, it wouldn’t be too different from what Apple did with mobile identifiers three years ago. Back then, it launched a privacy safeguard called App Tracking Transparency, which lets people say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ to sharing their data or Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) with apps and sites via a prompt.

“Then again, Google might throw the industry a curveball. If the whole saga of third-party cookies has taught ad execs anything, it’s to expect the unexpected.”

Says Jon Mew, Chief Executive at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the UK: “This news represents a significant shift in Google’s approach to third-party cookies, but it isn’t and shouldn’t be a return to cookies as the default. Our industry has made huge progress over the past four years and this process has irrevocably reshaped the digital ecosystem – that doesn’t just evaporate with the removal of Google’s cookie deadline.

“The reality is that a big proportion of the open web can’t be addressed by third-party cookies already, so continuing to pursue other ways of targeting and measuring audiences is vital.”

You can read the blog post by Anthony Chavez here.