Google is scrapping its planned changes for third-party cookies in Chrome

Google’s program to signifier retired third-party cookies successful Chrome is officially over. In an update connected Tuesday, Google Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez says the institution has decided “to support our existent attack to offering users third-party cooky prime successful Chrome.”

For years, critics person argued that Google’s Privacy Sandbox could harm advertisers and interruption privacy laws, portion the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told users to opt retired of the program, saying it “is inactive tracking your net usage for Google’s behavioral advertising.” Last week, a US justice recovered that Google “willfully engaged successful a bid of anticompetitive acts” successful the advertizing exertion industry, and the contention regulator successful the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has been investigating its evolving bid of proposals to code concerns that they mightiness springiness Google an unfair advantage.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox inaugural was announced successful 2020 with plans to artifact third-party cookies successful Chrome by default, akin to Firefox and Safari. It has made respective changes to the inaugural implicit the years, specified arsenic proposals similar its Topics API to delegate interests to users based connected their web enactment and different tools it said could people ads portion inactive offering immoderate privacy. But pursuing years of delays and scrutiny, Google said past twelvemonth that it would fto users take whether to opt into a cookie-less Chrome. Now, it appears the inaugural has travel astir wholly to an end.

“As we’ve engaged with the ecosystem, including publishers, developers, regulators, and the ads industry, it remains wide that determination are divergent perspectives connected making changes that could interaction the availability of third-party cookies,” Chavez writes, adding that Google “will not beryllium rolling retired a caller standalone punctual for third-party cookies.”

The Movement for an Open Web (MOW), which filed a ailment with the CMA astir the inaugural successful 2020, said Google’s latest update is an “admission” that the Privacy Sandbox is over.

“Google’s volition was to region unfastened and interoperable communications standards to bring integer advertizing postulation nether their sole power and, with this announcement, that purpose is present over,” MOW co-founder James Rosewell said successful an emailed connection to The Verge. “They’ve recognised that the regulatory obstacles to their monopolistic task are insurmountable and person fixed up.”