HIGH POINT — Google announced on Tuesday that the long-anticipated and often-delayed demise of third-party cookies on its Chrome browser would be postponed for a third time.
In making the announcement, Google noted that ongoing privacy and fair competition concerns from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) mean that the phase-out would not take place at the end of this year. While the company did not provide a specific timetable for the changes, it expressed hopes to begin depreciating cookies by 2025.
“We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem,” Google said in a statement.
“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. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4.”
UK regulators have expressed concern that Google’s proposed replacement for third-party cookies, the Privacy Sandbox, does not give small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses — whose lower website traffic means they heavily rely on third-party cookie data for marketing purposes — a fair shot at effective advertising to online consumers.