Google is commencing its initiative by restricting third-party cookies for just 1% of users on its Chrome web browser.After lagging behind rival web browsers, Google Chrome has finally taken a step towards enhanced online privacy by blocking websites from utilizing third-party cookies—the primary tool for tracking our online behavior.
Commencing this Thursday, the browser will initiate the blocking of third-party cookies for a minor 1% of users on both computers and Android phones, as stated by Anthony Chavez, the leader of Google’s Privacy Sandbox project, in a blog post. The broader implementation of this block is slated for all Chrome users by the end of 2024, following a schedule that has experienced multiple postponements in recent years.
While the current Chrome change affects only a small segment of users, it marks a pivotal moment for the web. Cookies, those diminutive text files stored by websites on phones and PCs, have been integral to web functioning since its inception, making their removal a challenging endeavor despite a growing emphasis on online privacy. Notably, Chrome’s dominance, accounting for 63% of web usage according to analytics firm StatCounter, underscores the far-reaching impact of this transformative shift.
Major browser competitors, including Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Brave, began blocking cookies years ago, but Google moved more slowly. It was more cautious about undermining the online advertising industry, which supports many websites as well as advertisers. And the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority intervened in 2021 with concerns that Chrome blocking third-party cookies would give an unfair advantage to Google’s advertising business by letting the company track behavior on its own websites without third-party cookies.
Without cookies, some have employed tracking technologies that are more surreptitious and harder to block, like fingerprinting that identifies characteristics of your computing device. Now Google and others are working on replacements for at least some of what cookies offered, for example, helping advertisers know if their ads have been seen. Finding a way to help advertisers while protecting privacy has been tough, but Google believes it’s possible.
“As we work to make the web more private, we’ll provide businesses with tools to succeed online so that high quality content remains freely accessible — whether that’s news articles, videos, educational information, community sites or other forms of web content,” Chavez said.