Google announces again that it will postpone 'policy to phase out third-party cookies' in Chrome

In its ' Privacy Sandbox Policy' announced on April 22, 2025, Google stated that it 'decided to maintain its current approach of offering users a choice regarding third-party cookies in Chrome,' reiterating its decision to postpone its plan to phase out third-party cookies.

Next steps for Privacy Sandbox and tracking protections in Chrome
https://privacysandbox.com/news/privacy-sandbox-next-steps/

Google won't ditch third-party cookies in Chrome after all - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/google-wont-ditch-third-party-cookies-in-chrome-after-all/

Google is scraping its planned changes for third-party cookies in Chrome | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/news/653964/google-privacy-sandbox-plans-scrapped-third-party-cookies

Third-party cookies are cookies issued by a website other than the one you are browsing, allowing companies to track which sites you visit and understand your behavioral patterns and interests in order to serve you appropriate advertisements.

Third-party cookies have played an important role in the web advertising industry, but they have been criticized for violating user privacy and have been subject to regulation in various countries. Web browsers including Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox also restrict third-party cookies.

Google, whose core business is advertising, has released a research report stating that publishers would lose 52% of their revenue if they did not use third-party cookies. However, in 2020, the company revealed that it plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome in the future in order to build a more private web.

Chrome plans to phase out support for third-party cookies within two years - GIGAZINE

by Glenn Carstens-Peters

Caught between the user's opinion that 'tracking behavior without permission is an invasion of privacy' and the publisher's opinion that 'abolishing third-party cookies will reduce revenue,' Google proposed the 'Privacy Sandbox' in 2019. The idea behind this Privacy Sandbox is to provide a technology to replace third-party cookies and introduce a mechanism to measure the effectiveness of advertising without identifying individuals.

What will happen if Google implements a cookie-less 'Privacy Sandbox'? - GIGAZINE

However, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) , a technology that was expected to replace third-party cookies in the Privacy Sandbox, has received a lot of backlash due to concerns about privacy violations, and Amazon , WordPress , and GitHub have also announced that they will disable FLoC. In response to these developments, Google has announced that it will postpone the abolition of third-party cookies in Chrome, which was scheduled for 2022.

Google Chrome postpones the abolition of third-party cookies - GIGAZINE

Later, Google adopted a new technology called ' Topic API ' instead of the unpopular FLoC, but postponed the abolition of third-party cookies again until 2024. Then, in July 2024, Google announced that it would withdraw its plans to phase out third-party cookies, stating, 'Rather than abolishing third-party cookies, we are proposing a new approach to enhance user choice.'

Google withdraws plans to remove third-party cookies from Chrome - GIGAZINE

In the announcement of the withdrawal in 2024, Google proposed a policy to introduce 'a new experience that respects user choice' to Chrome. This was not to abolish third-party cookies uniformly, but to change the policy to 'present the choice of whether to allow or reject third-party cookies once and set it all at once.' However, due to the issue of ongoing discussions with regulators, the details of the implementation had not been finalized.

However, in this announcement, Google once again declared the withdrawal of the plan to phase out third-party cookies, and at the same time, it was made clear that the introduction of this 'bulk setting option' would also be canceled. In other words, it was decided to maintain the traditional method of 'users manually choosing whether to allow or reject the use of third-party cookies for each website.' As reasons for this decision, Google cited 'the lack of consensus among publishers, the advertising industry, developers, and regulators on how to handle third-party cookies after 2024,' 'the increasing popularity of privacy-enhancing technologies, and the reality of advertising and measurement that do not rely on cookies,' and 'the complexity and diversity of legal regulations in each country, making it difficult to determine legality.'

However, third-party cookies will continue to be blocked by default in Chrome's incognito mode, and Google plans to introduce IP address protection and AI-based security features in the third quarter of 2025 (July to September).

James Rosewell, co-founder of The Movement for an Open Web (MOW), an industry group that advocates for an open internet, told The Verge, an IT news site, 'Google's intention was to eliminate open, interoperable communications standards and monopolize digital advertising traffic for itself. But with this announcement, that aim is over. Google has realized that the obstacles to its proprietary project are insurmountable, and it has given up.'