For the second time since the initial announcement of the sunsetting of its cookies program, Google has pushed back the expected date of the cull to the second half of 2024.
In a blog post published overnight, VP of Privacy Sandbox Anthony Chavez confirmed the change of timeline, stating that “the most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.”
“This feedback aligns with our commitment to the CMA to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has sufficient time to adopt these new solutions. This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting.”
The original target for the end of the cookies usage on Chrome was set for early 2022, but an update in July 2021 confirmed Google’s intent to push the date back to 2023 to allow the advertising industry time to adapt to more privacy-focused campaigns.
The blog post also gave more depth to the tech giant’s plans regarding the Privacy Sandbox project, Google’s intended third-party alternative to cookies first announced back in 2019.
Chavez stated that the current target is to have “millions of users globally” taking part in the project trials starting in August with the numbers increasingly for the rest of the year and through to 2023.
This new timeline should provide advertisers enough time to adapt to the Sandbox project and come up with advertising alternatives that meet the new privacy requirements by the time most users have access to the APIs in late 2023.
