Now, after years of saying that cookie tracking is going away and marketers need to prepare for the next big change, Google has announced that they aren’t going to get rid of cookies after all.
After years of discussions that saw Google repeatedly postpone its cookie phase-out due to various challenges and concerns, the search giant has now been forced to reassess its approach and has announced that it is exploring entirely new alternatives to enhance data privacy.
According to Google:
““We’re proposing a new approach that gives users more choice. Rather than eliminating third-party cookies, we’re introducing a new experience in Chrome that gives users the ability to make informed choices that apply across their web browsing, and adjust those choices at any time. We’re consulting with regulators on this new path, and will work with the industry as we roll it out.”
This effectively ended five years of unrest among industry players.
To summarize, in 2020, Google announced its initial plans to phase out cookie tracking by 2022. This was in line with a broader shift towards greater data privacy and control for web users. Google’s phase-out plan includes the following new Cohort Federated Learning (FLoC) This model allows for a level of tracking of user activity without personal identifiers that can be tied to specific users.
However, this plan was contested by many people across different industries, and as a result, in 2021, Google announced that it would postpone its FLoC plans with the aim of establishing a better solution that would address all requirements.
Google then shifted focus to its Privacy Sandbox project, which had previously operated as a small element. Google released Privacy Sandbox to the public in September 2023, with new plans to utilize the project as a replacement for cookies by January 2024. The updated system is set to classify web users into topic categories, rather than facilitating the tracking of individuals.
Google’s Privacy Sandbox was scheduled to replace cookies by the third quarter of this year.
But that didn’t happen either.
After various concerns were raised by different industries and regulators, Google has once again postponed the cookie phase-out. This is mainly due to: British The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had expressed a number of concerns about how the move would affect the digital marketing industry as a whole and Google’s competitors in the sector.
So while Google’s cookie phase-out was eventually delayed until at least 2025, the phase-out isn’t happening at all right now because Google is tired of appeasing all the different players.
“We’d like to thank all the organizations and individuals who have helped develop, test, and deploy the Privacy Sandbox over the past four years. As we finalize our approach, we will continue to consult with the CMA, the ICO, and other regulators around the world. We look forward to continued collaboration with the ecosystem on this next stage of our journey towards a more private web.“
Google has said it will continue to offer its Privacy Sandbox APIs and continue to invest in further improving privacy and utility, so alternatives based on this model will likely continue to exist.
But it’s not the only way, and at least for now, Google has no plans to phase out tracking cookies entirely.
This means that many industry players can breathe a sigh of relief that they don’t need to implement all new systems and processes to make data tracking easier. Of course, things will continue to change, but for the time being, at least, the status quo in the data world is likely to remain the same.
It’s a surprising shift for the company, which seemed determined to make the switch on the back of Apple’s beefed-up data privacy updates, including its controversial switch to App Tracking Transparency in 2022. That seemed to open the door to Google’s new approach, but the company has been hesitant to make any big changes that could affect its core advertising business or bring increased regulatory scrutiny.
As a result, Google has revised and delayed the move until it determined it had no chance of satisfying all parties. So it’s time to change course and adopt a whole new data privacy approach for its apps.
It’s not yet clear what form that will take, but as Google points out, it will be based on user choice, allowing individuals to limit the data they share.
Based on past evidence, this could be a big win for advertisers, as most users won’t change the settings at all. But if Google starts notifying users with popups, like Apple does with ATT, it could also get a lot worse, leading to a lot less user data in circulation.
We’ll just have to wait and watch, but for now, the cookies seem to be here to stay.
