Google on Tuesday revealed that it’s going to now not provide a standalone immediate for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser as a part of its Privateness Sandbox initiative.
“We have made the choice to keep up our present strategy to providing customers third-party cookie alternative in Chrome, and won’t be rolling out a brand new standalone immediate for third-party cookies,” Anthony Chavez, vice chairman of Privateness Sandbox at Google, mentioned.
“Customers can proceed to decide on the most suitable choice for themselves in Chrome’s Privateness and Safety Settings.”
Again in July 2024, the tech big mentioned it had deserted its plans to deprecate third-party monitoring cookies and that it intends to roll out a brand new expertise as an alternative that lets customers make an knowledgeable alternative.
Google mentioned suggestions from publishers, builders, regulators, and the adverts business has made it clear there are “divergent views” on making adjustments that might have an effect on the provision of third-party cookies.
As a replacement, the tech behemoth mentioned it would proceed to put money into enhancing monitoring protections in Chrome’s Incognito mode, which blocks third-party cookies by default. It additionally intends to introduce a brand new IP Safety function within the third quarter of 2025.
Already out there as an open-source challenge, the function goals to restrict the provision of a consumer’s authentic IP deal with in third-party contexts in Incognito mode to stop cross-site monitoring.
“In mild of this replace, we perceive that the Privateness Sandbox APIs could have a distinct function to play in supporting the ecosystem,” Chavez mentioned. “We’ll have interaction with the business to assemble suggestions and share an up to date roadmap for these applied sciences, together with our future areas of funding, within the coming months.”
It is value noting that whereas Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox have blocked third-party cookies by default since 2020, Google has had a more durable time rolling out comparable protections owing to its competing pursuits as a browser vendor, an promoting platform, and a search engine.
The event additionally comes at a time when Google is going through intense regulatory scrutiny within the U.S. in current months, with two completely different rulings accusing the corporate of sustaining a monopoly within the search and promoting markets.
The U.S. Division of Justice, as not too long ago as final month, has proposed breaking apart Google by divesting the Chrome net browser and forcing it to syndicate its search outcomes as a technique to restore competitors to the net search market.
AI firm OpenAI mentioned it could be involved in shopping for the browser if Google is pressured to promote it off and “introduce customers into what an AI-first [browser] appears to be like like,” per Bloomberg and Reuters.