Google abandons plan to drop third-party cookies in Chrome • History

Google no longer plans to stop supporting third-party cookies — online identifiers used by the advertising industry to track people and target them with ads based on their online activities.

on monday mailAnthony Chavez, Google’s vice president of Privacy Sandbox, revealed that the search and advertising giant has come to realize that its five-year effort to build a suite of privacy-preserving advertising technologies requires a lot of work and has implications for online advertisers — some of whom have been vocal in their opposition.

In light of this, we are proposing an updated approach that increases user choice, Chavez wrote. “Instead of opting out of third-party cookies, we are introducing a new Chrome experience that lets people make an informed choice that applies to their web browsing, and they will be able to modify that choice at any time.”

the Privacy box – A set of APIs to provide privacy protections through online advertising and analytics – will coexist alongside third-party cookies in Chrome for the foreseeable future.

Rather than phasing out support for third-party cookies in Chrome next year — subject to a test that began in January — Google intends to let Chrome users choose whether they want to play in the Privacy Sandbox, or in the neighboring data surveillance land where third-party cookies support all manner of information collection.

It remains to be seen whether Chrome’s interface for choosing between Privacy Sandbox and traditional third-party cookies will be any less confusing than the widely criticized “Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome” pop-up that heralded the arrival of Privacy Sandbox APIs in Chrome last year.

“This is a clear admission by Google that their plan to shut down the open internet has failed,” said James Roswell, co-founder of the Open Internet Movement. “Their goal was to remove the consensus that allowed companies to work together without interference from monopolies, but a combination of regulatory and industry pressure has thwarted that plan.”

Google described its goal for Privacy Sandbox years ago, in different terms: “We want to find a solution that truly protects user privacy and also helps keep content freely available on the web,” claimed Justin Schuh, then Chrome’s director of engineering.

But concerns raised by MOW and other ad industry critics were that Google’s Privacy Sandbox, along with the data signals it gets from signed-in Chrome users, would give it access to advertising-relevant information that competitors don’t have access to.

Google began working on the Privacy Sandbox project in 2019, at a time when Apple and Mozilla (before it became an advertising company as well) is committed to protecting users against trackers and has started blocking third-party cookies by default.

By 2021, Google’s plan has paid off. investigation The UK Competition and Markets Authority has urged ad industry foes like MOW to investigate the matter, and as a result of that investigation, Google agreed to a set of commitments in 2022 to accommodate competition.

To complicate matters further, Google’s initial attempt to phase out third-party cookies failed to deliver the promised privacy. Technical setbacks and regulatory pressure have led Google to delay its plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome.

Now that will never happen.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority announced that it would not publish its quarterly update on Google’s compliance at the end of the month, following the chocolate factory’s announcement, and invited interested parties to submit their comments by August 12.

A Competition and Markets Authority spokesperson explained: “We intervened and made commitments in 2022 due to concerns that Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals could distort competition by causing advertising spend to be more heavily concentrated on Google’s ecosystem at the expense of its competitors.”

“We will need to carefully consider Google’s new approach to the Privacy Sandbox, and work closely with [Information Commissioner’s Office] In this regard, we welcome feedback on Google’s revised approach – including potential implications for consumers and market outcomes.

Lena Cohen, a technology expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation — an advocacy group that has consistently criticized the Privacy Sandbox proposal — expressed regret over Google’s decision to backtrack on its cancellation plan.

“This is a very disappointing decision and really highlights Google’s commitment to its own profits over users’ privacy,” Cohen said. The record.

“Safari and Firefox have blocked third-party cookies by default since 2020, and Google has pledged to do the same since then. So I think this reversal, after years of delay, is simply a result of its advertising-based business model, which relies on massive user surveillance.”

Cohen noted that researchers and regulators have already found that Privacy Sandbox fails to achieve some of its privacy goals. “Third-party cookies are a more intrusive form of online tracking than Privacy Sandbox,” Cohen said.

“So the fact that Privacy Sandbox has not adequately monitored the internet is troubling. It simply shows that this advertising system encourages the very invasive collection of user information. That’s why EFF has been calling for years for a ban on behavioral advertising, because that’s the kind of surveillance it encourages.”

Separately, Cohen wrote a letter to the EFF. statement The advocacy group on Monday urged Chrome users to install the Privacy Badger browser extension — to opt out of Google’s Privacy Sandbox.