Google Has Postponed the Deprecation of 3rd Party Cookies, Again… Again… and Again
- POV’s
- April 30, 2024
- Rasmus Koch
2020, the year we all remember for Covid lockdown, but it was also the year Google announced that they planned to phase out all 3rd party cookies starting with trials during the year. In 2022 Google decided to delay the phase out for 2 years, so it would be in the end of 2024 the 3rd party cookie would be gone for good. Until the phase out, Google would use the time working on The Privacy Sandbox which is a set of technologies and standards developed by Google to improve online privacy while still allowing advertisers to deliver relevant ads. It aims to replace third-party cookies with more privacy-friendly alternatives.
Recently Google started deprecating 3rd party cookies for 1% of all Chrome users worldwide as a test, but during the last couple of years both advertisers, developers and regulators have been criticizing Google for not having a sufficient setup ready for the full phaseout.
Back in January UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raised multiple concerns with the Privacy Sandbox that needed to be addressed before Google could continue the phase out.
After a flashback through the years, we are now back in April 2024.
On April 23 Google sent out a statement that they recognize the ongoing challenges, and feedback from the industry. Furthermore, they say “It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June”.
Which leads us to the main reason for this article; Because of all these issues and concerns Google has decided to postpone the phase out of the 3rd party cookies until beginning of 2025. The updated timeline looks like this:
This shouldn’t be seen as a free pass in the cookieless/1st party cookie transformation, the work should remain consistent and continue as it would have been if 3rd party cookies were to be removed during 2024. This has just given all companies an extended test and learn phase for the new setup, where the setup can be tuned and improved before the real show starts in 2025.
If you have any questions regarding 3rd party cookies feel free to reach out to Rasmus Koch, Director of Tracking & Analytics at [email protected]
