UK Regulator Accepts Google's Privacy Sandbox Commitments

What Changed

In January 2021, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an investigation into Google's plans to phase out third-party cookies and other functions in Chrome, after a number of businesses raised competition concerns.¹ The worry was that Google would remove tools its rivals depended on, while keeping its own advantages from its signed-in services.

Google offered commitments to resolve those concerns, and on February 11, 2022, the CMA accepted them, making them legally binding.^1,2 They included:

• developing and implementing the Privacy Sandbox in a way that avoided distorting competition, with the CMA and the UK's data protection regulator, the ICO, involved in the design;
• publicly disclosing the results of tests of the replacement technologies;
• substantial limits on how Google would use and combine individual user data for advertising after third-party cookies were removed;
• not discriminating in favour of Google's own advertising and ad tech businesses;
• a standstill period of at least 60 days before removing third-party cookies, during which the CMA could reopen its investigation.

Google also said the commitments would be rolled out globally, so a UK regulator's oversight shaped the plan for Chrome users everywhere. The CMA then appointed a monitoring trustee and published regular progress reports.²

Why It Mattered

The commitments put a competition regulator inside the design of a browser feature. Every later change to Chrome's cookie plan, including the delays in 2022 and 2024, happened under the CMA's oversight, and Google tied its timelines to resolving the CMA's concerns.³

The arrangement ended in 2025. After Google decided to keep third-party cookies and retire most Privacy Sandbox technologies, the CMA proposed in June 2025 to release Google from the commitments. It said they were no longer needed now that Google had stepped back from its plans, and that if the Privacy Sandbox raised competition concerns again, it could act under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.⁴ It released Google on October 17, 2025.¹