Google had planned to block third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, but now – surprise – the company is leaving the privacy-invading technology in place.
Google starts blocking cookies: What this means for consumers and advertisers
As part of its Privacy Sandbox policy, Google announced in 2020 that it would phase out third-party cookies in the name of user privacy. The plan was to do this within two years. That, of course, never happened, and now Google has done a complete U-turn. At the heart of this story is the ad tech industry’s enduring belief that it has the right to track everything we do on the web, and cookies are just an increasingly ineffective part of that. The good news is that it’s easy to block them yourself. The bad news is that the proposed alternatives aren’t any better.
“If you ask me, this decision means Google is finally admitting that its alternatives to third-party cookies are worse for targeting and not better for consumer privacy,” advertising and marketing consultant Rio Longacre told Lifewire via email.
First, what are third-party cookies anyway? We know what cookies are: little bits of data that a website stores on your computer so that it knows it’s you when you return to the site. These “first party cookies” are used to keep you logged in to a site you visit often, like your email or Reddit. They can also store preferences, like light or dark mode, and more. They’re pretty useful.
