Google is now calling for Privacy Sandbox technologies to be in place in the Chrome web browser and available to third party developers by the end of 2022, and for tracking cookies to be phased out of the browser beginning in mid-2023.
Google has made the timeline for the Privacy Sandbox deprecation of third-party cookies more clear, saying that 1% of Chrome users will be switched to the new online advertising system in the first quarter of 2024.
UK CMA Plans to Investigate Google Chrome’s “Privacy Sandbox” for Potential Anticompetitive Behavior
The "Privacy Sandbox" initiative proposed by Google could bring major changes to the online advertising industry, disabling third-party cookies entirely in the Chrome browser. Could this be considered anticompetitive?
Google's Privacy Sandbox has already attracted the attention of antitrust regulators in both the US and UK, with fears of it increasing the company's dominance in adtech. The price is climbing steeply due to delays, and smaller adtech outfits are struggling to keep up.
Google's Privacy Sandbox project has been touted as the end of tracking cookies and creepy cross-site following, but it is facing regulatory trouble as the UK ICO has expressed concerns about a collection of "loopholes" that could be used to personally identify and track internet users.
Since the start of the Privacy Sandbox project, Google has been strongly pushing to eliminate third party cookies entirely beginning with its Chrome browser. That initiative had seemed to be well underway, but now appears to be over.
Google's privacy sandbox proposal now plans to phase out third party cookies from the Chrome browser by 2022, and has laid out what is at least a theoretical roadmap to preserving the targeted ad industry without the major incursions into user privacy that are so common today.
Google's "Privacy Sandbox" project will proceed with the UK’s CMA taking a direct hand due to concerns that whatever Google develops will allow it to take an even greater share of the search advertising market.
