Google has proposed a new timeline to withdraw support for third-party cookies. The online advertising giant is now suggesting its market-leading Chrome browser will implement the process in 2023, instead of next year.
Google is proposing that starting in the later part of 2022, publishers and advertisers can start to migrate their services to technology specs outlined in its Privacy Sandbox initiative over a nine-month period.
After this, Google Chrome will start to phase out support for third-party cookies over a three-month period in 2023 in keeping with its earlier proposed concessions to U.K. competition watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority.
More time is needed.
Vinay Goel, Google Chrome
Vinay Goel, a privacy engineer on the Google Chrome team, described how despite considerable process, it’s become clear that “more time is needed” across the ecosystem to get this right.
“For Chrome, specifically, our goal is to have the key technologies deployed by late 2022 for the developer community to start adopting them,” Goel wrote in a blog post announcing the news.
The announcement will be greeted with a sigh of relief by many given that Google’s earlier-stated timeline indicated the online advertising industry would have to wean itself off third-party cookies (a core tool for online ad targeting) by 2022.
Google Chrome confirmed its plans to withdraw support for third-party cookies in early 2020, prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, its Privacy Sandbox initiative – the online advertising giant’s subsequent attempts to test new ad targeting technologies – hit several delays in the interim with publishers and ad-tech vendors alike voicing concerns over some of its proposals.
“Soon we will provide a more detailed schedule on privacysandbox.com, where it will be updated regularly to provide greater clarity and ensure that developers and publishers can plan their testing and migration schedules,” Google’s Goel wrote.
