What Changed
Google had planned to remove third-party cookies for all Chrome users from the third quarter of 2024, after restricting them for 1% in January. On April 23, 2024, in its quarterly update, it said it would not complete the phase-out in the last part of the year.1
Google gave two reasons. One was the difficulty of "reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers." The other was that the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) needed enough time to review all the evidence, including results of industry tests, which it had asked for by the end of June.1 Assuming it could reach an agreement, Google said, it expected to start removing cookies early the following year.1,2
The CMA's own quarterly report, published three days later, found that Google had complied with its commitments but that further progress was needed to resolve the regulator's competition concerns before cookies were removed. It agreed to a limited delay.3,4 The Register counted almost 80 issues in the report that had yet to be resolved to the regulators' satisfaction.5 Those concerns centred on whether the replacements would favour Google's own advertising business, the issue behind the commitments Google made in 2022.
The UK's data protection regulator wasn't satisfied either. The same week, The Wall Street Journal reported on a draft report from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) that said the Privacy Sandbox left gaps that could be exploited to undermine privacy and identify people online. The ICO declined to comment on the draft.6
The industry wasn't ready either. In a survey of more than 160 digital advertising professionals published by IAB Europe in February 2024, 76% said their businesses relied on third-party cookies, only 51% said they were prepared for them to go, and 55% hadn't yet tested the Privacy Sandbox APIs.7 That was the divergent feedback Google had to reconcile: regulators asking for more protections, and an industry asking for more time.
Why It Mattered
It was the third delay, and the first in which Google said outright that the next step depended on reaching an agreement with regulators. Two of them were now involved, pulling in different directions: one concerned that the replacements would hurt Google's competitors, the other that they wouldn't protect privacy enough.
The test results the CMA was waiting for didn't help. They suggested publishers would earn substantially less without cookies, even with the Privacy Sandbox. In July 2024, Google stopped planning to remove third-party cookies altogether.
Notes
- “Update on the Plan for Phase-Out of Third-Party Cookies on Chrome,” Privacy Sandbox, Google, April 23, 2024, https://privacysandbox.google.com/blog/update-on-the-plan-for-phase-out-of-third-party-cookies-on-chrome. abc
- Richard Speed, “Google Pushes Third-Party Cookie Phase-Out Back to 2025,” The Register, April 24, 2024, https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/24/google_delays_cookie_cull/. ↩
- Competition and Markets Authority, “Investigation into Google’s ‘Privacy Sandbox’ Browser Changes,” GOV.UK, accessed October 11, 2026, https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/investigation-into-googles-privacy-sandbox-browser-changes. ↩
- “Q1 2024: Update from CMA & Google on Privacy Sandbox,” IAB UK, April 26, 2024, https://www.iabuk.com/news-article/q1-2024-update-cma-google-privacy-sandbox. Summarizing the CMA’s Q1 2024 update report. ↩
- Thomas Claburn, “Watchdog Reveals Lingering Google Privacy Sandbox Worries,” The Register, April 29, 2024, https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/uk_cma_google/. ↩
- Thomas Claburn, “UK Data Watchdog Questions How Private Google’s Privacy Sandbox Is,” The Register, April 22, 2024, https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/22/ico_google_privacy_sandbox/. ↩
- “IAB Europe Unveils Findings on Digital Advertising Industry’s Readiness for Post Third-Party Cookie Era,” IAB Europe, February 22, 2024, https://iabeurope.eu/iab-europe-unveils-findings-on-digital-advertising-industrys-readiness-for-post-third-party-cookie-era/. ↩