It turns out that Google really does have a sweet tooth as the digital giant reversed course and will keep third-party cookies on Chrome, the world’s most popular browser.
“Google is no longer killing third-party cookies and will keep them operational within Chrome browsers next year and beyond, the tech giant announced Monday,” Ad Age reported July 22, 2024. “Google said it would leave the internet trackers available in Chrome, but that it would develop options for consumers to decide whether to accept them or not.”
Marketers have been following this Google cookie saga for four years now.
“Since Google first announced it was getting rid of cookies in 2020, advertisers have been in a will they, won’t they, with the tech giant repeatedly kicking its own deadline to phase out the tech down the road,” said Marketing Brew.
Google Can’t Keep Its Hands Out of the Cookie Jar
Like a kid sneaking into the kitchen late at night, Google hasn’t been able to keep its hands out of the cookie jar despite repeated promises to send cookies to the marketing rubbish bin.
Initially, Google promised in January 2020 to phase out cookies – small text files that websites send to a user’s browser to store information about the user and their browsing activity – within two years.
When that deadline was blown, Google said it would phase out third-party cookies over a three-month period, starting in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023.
And when that deadline came and went, Google reported earlier this year that they were running a limited test to restrict cookies for 1 percent of the people who use its Chrome browser, according to The Wall Street Journal, and that cookies for all users would be phased out by Q3 2024.
But, cookies, they can be a hard habit to break – especially in terms of the $600 billion-a-year online ad business.
Google’s New Path Forward: You Choose the Cookie Experience?!?
Google’s cookie U-turn came via a post by Anthony Chavez, Vice President of Privacy Sandbox, the entity developing the APIs to essentially replace the cookie experience.
Reading between the lines, we can assume that the 1 percent test for removing cookies did not pass the taste test.
“Early testing from ad tech companies, including Google, has indicated that the Privacy Sandbox APIs have the potential to achieve these outcomes. And we expect that overall performance using Privacy Sandbox APIs will improve over time as industry adoption increases,” explained Chavez. “At the same time, we recognize this transition requires significant work by many participants and will have an impact on publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising.”
Google’s decision then, according to Chavez: “In light of this, we are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time. We're discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out.”
Moving forward, Google says several things:
- It remains important for developers to have privacy-preserving alternatives.
- Google will continue to make the Privacy Sandbox APIs available and invest in them to further improve privacy and utility.
- Google also intends to offer additional privacy controls, planning to introduce IP Protection into Chrome's Incognito mode.
Fortune Cookie Says: Future is Most Unclear
If Google released a fortune cookie about this saga, it would probably read “Heck if We Know!” as the July announcement offers few, if any, specifics on the way forward.
“While cookies could live another day, what exactly this new user experience could be—or how advertisers will reach users through it—remains unclear, and a Google spokesperson declined to comment on the record about what the new approach will look like,” concluded the Marketing Brew article.
The Wall Street Journal said, according to UK regulators, that Google will present users with a prompt to decide whether to turn cookies on or off.
“We’re exploring an approach that elevates user choice,” a Google spokesman told the publication.
CNBC says that for now, Google’s move will probably mean the way you interact with the web will look the same: “Users will still see checkboxes at the top of a web page asking whether they want to accept all cookies or just essential ones. The implications will likely be bigger for advertisers as the valuable data that marketers get from being able to track users around the web will continue.”
It often comes down to money, and the Marketing Brew reported that early feedback on “life without cookies” during the cookie-less test phase for some showed that publishers could lose between 30 and 60 percent of their revenue.
“If cookies disappeared, it would become more difficult to tap into that data to target online ads. Many digital publishers, ad-tech companies, and data brokers have been bracing for a decline in ad prices once cookies were gone,” reported The Wall Street Journal.
Keep working with cookies as is? Prepare, anyway, for a future without cookies – as either regulators or consumers finally have their say? Plan for both?
Duncan Smith, Global CPO at agency Journey Further, told Econsultancy that "marketers should view this as a temporary reprieve rather than a reason to abandon privacy-first strategies. The quality and reach of third-party cookie data continue to degrade, especially in our multi-device world, making it an increasingly unreliable foundation for media strategies. While cookies remain a tool in the arsenal, brands should prioritize first-party data collection and invest in cookie-less measurement solutions to future-proof their analytics and ensure they can reach premium, representative audiences across all browsers.”
What’s clear is that we will have to wait and see what Google does next in this cookie caper.
Cookie Control
Note: If you are on your Chrome browser right now, you can turn off cookies by doing the following:
- Click the three buttons in the top right corner
- Click Settings
- Click Privacy and Security
- Click Third-party Cookies
- Choose to:
- Allow third-party cookies
- Block third-party cookies in incognito mode
- Block third-party cookies
