Years after rival web browsers made the move, Google Chrome has begun blocking websites from using third-party cookies, the easiest way to track our online behavior as we move around the web.
Starting Thursday, the browser will block third-party cookies for 1% of users on computers and Android phones, said Anthony Chavez, leader of Google’s Privacy Sandbox project, in a blog post. Google will extend the block to all Chrome users by the end of 2024 under a schedule that has been pushed back several times in recent years.
The Chrome change, even though it so far only affects a small portion of people, is a momentous change for the web. Cookies, small text files that websites store on phones and PCs, have been used nearly since the dawn of the web, and ejecting them has been tough despite a growing effort to protect privacy online. Chrome is the dominant browser, accounting for 63% of web usage, according to analytics firm StatCounter.
Major browser competitors, including Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Brave, began blocking cookies years ago, but Google moved more slowly. It was more cautious about undermining the online advertising industry, which supports many websites as well as advertisers. And the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority intervened in 2021 with concerns that Chrome blocking third-party cookies would give an unfair advantage to Google’s advertising business by letting the company track behavior on its own websites without third-party cookies.
Without cookies, some have employed tracking technologies that are more surreptitious and harder to block, like fingerprinting that identifies characteristics of your computing device. Now Google and others are working on replacements for at least some of what cookies offered, for example, helping advertisers know if their ads have been seen. Finding a way to help advertisers while protecting privacy has been tough, but Google believes it’s possible.
“As we work to make the web more private, we’ll provide businesses with tools to succeed online so that high quality content remains freely accessible — whether that’s news articles, videos, educational information, community sites or other forms of web content,” Chavez said.
