Earlier this year, Google announced that it would block third-party cookies for 1% of its users the Chrome browser, the most popular internet browser in the world. However, the company hasn't made much progress in that direction since then, and this week announced that blocking cookies for all browser users will be delayed again.
„We recognize the ongoing challenges in reconciling the diverse feedback from industry, regulators and developers and will continue to work closely across the ecosystem in this area. It is also important that the CMA [UK Competition and Markets Authority] has sufficient time to consider all the evidence, including the results of industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. "Given the importance of these aspects, we will not be able to complete our process to remove third-party cookies in the second half of the fourth quarter," Google said in a statement.
The company did not provide a more precise timetable for stopping the use of third-party cookies in Chrome. This will likely happen at some point in 2025. This is the third time the tech giant has pushed back its original deadline, which was January 2020. At the time, Google announced its intention to phase out the use of third-party cookies “in two years” to improve the safety of users while browsing the Internet. Since then, the deadlines have already been postponed twice, and this was done so that the advertising industry could prepare for the changes.
As for cookies themselves, they have been around since the dawn of the Internet and are used to store user site settings on the computer, thereby eliminating the need to log into each page of a specific web resource. Third-party cookies provide access to the user profile from one site to another. This makes it possible to track user activity across multiple sites to build a profile of user preferences in order to display additional interest-based advertising content. Google's innovation will not affect local cookies, but will block third-party cookies, making it harder for advertisers to track user activity.