Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies in its Chrome offering is being pushed back to early 2025 as opposed to ending in the fourth quarter of this year, said the company in a blog post on Tuesday.
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While phasing out cookies sounds like a win for users and privacy advocates, the rollout is on the slower side and regulators worry that it could lead to antitrust challenges where Google is able to dominate the digital ads space completely.
For this reason, regulators such as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are looking into Google’s plans, which are taking place under its ‘Privacy Sandbox for the Web’ programme.
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“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,” said Google in its blog post.
“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.”
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Cookies are data packets compiled by websites in order to learn about a user’s web interactions and make it easier for them the next time they return to the location. However, cookies can also track users across multiple websites and reduce their privacy online.
Users who do not want to deal with trackers when on the internet sometimes choose to switch to privacy browsers such as Brave and DuckDuckGo.
Others can manually clear their cookies when required, or choose not to give permission to sites that request the user to allow cookies.