Google has reconsidered its previously announced plan to turn off third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome browser in favor of an option to be controlled by consumers. The original plan was pushed back a few times but was expected to take place early next year. Competitors and regulators have raised concerns about the deprecation that would have left Google — which hauled in more than $237.86 billion in ad revenue last year — free to use its own tracking to serve targeted ads to those using Chrome. Google is now developing a new plan to let consumers make their own informed decisions about whether to allow third-party cookies.

Cookies help marketers anonymously track consumers’ online habits, using the information to serve targeted ads. First-party cookies are those served by the browser maker and whatever domain a user visits, while third-party cookies are just that — tracking bots controlled by professional marketing entities that have nothing to do with the consumer’s behavior.

Both Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari browsers have third-party cookies turned off by default.

In a blog post, Google says its Privacy Sandbox initiative was developed “with the goal of finding innovative solutions that meaningfully improve online privacy while preserving an ad-supported Internet,” and provides an alternate solution while still supporting a “vibrant ecosystem” of free Internet resources.

“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. We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out,” explains Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez.

Though details are scant, The Verge says the new proposal “could work more like Apple’s app tracking opt-in, a setting that reportedly cost social media platforms nearly $10 billion when it rolled out in 2021,” but qualifies that “putting a prompt in front of Chrome’s billions of users wouldn’t be as drastic as changing the default entirely,” though would still be likely to reduce the number of third-party cookie participants.

Whatever the Alphabet company decides will have “big implications for advertisers and the future of the Internet,” according to CNBC, which quotes an attorney calling third-party cookies “the backbone of online behavioral advertising. They are the way that products or brands follow you around online.”

Related:
Results from Our Display Ads Experiment with the Privacy Sandbox APIs, Google, 7/22/24
Time to Turn Off Cookies? Making Sense of Google’s Chrome Changes, The Wall Street Journal, 7/23/24