Google confirms it won’t disable third-party cookies on Chrome by default

Anthony Chavez, Vice President of the Privacy Sandbox at Google, wrote on Monday, “We developed the Privacy Sandbox with the goal of finding innovative solutions that meaningfully improve online privacy while preserving an ad-supported internet that supports a vibrant ecosystem of publishers, connects businesses with customers, and offers all of us free access to a wide range of content.”

Google has also published the results of early testing. The use of the Privacy Sandbox API in the absence of third-party cookies can “help publishers improve their monetisation and mitigate the impact from signal loss” and it could result in an “incremental 13% uplift for publishers on Google Ad Manager and 3% uplift for publishers on Google AdSense”, according to the company.

Google is trying to phase out third-party cookies, or small pieces of data stored on user devices that can be used to track users across websites, which is a privacy concern. The Privacy Sandbox is said to be a replacement for third-party cookies, but without any privacy concerns.

Google says just like third-party cookies, the Privacy Sandbox can still be used to target ads based on user interest but without identifying them individually, and it is also said to be better at measuring the effectiveness of an ad or personalised content.

Google has developed the Privacy Sandbox by taking feedback from stakeholders across the industry such as developers, publishers, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and Information Commissioner’s Office, civil society, and the advertising industry.

Google is also introducing IP protection for incognito mode on Chrome. This will anonymise the user’s IP address to protect their online identity from third parties and cross-website tracking.