Years into its plan to kill the third-party browser cookie in Chrome and after moving deadlines back, Google has relented to advertiser pressure and at last changed its mind.
The company said in a blog post it will give the ad industry more time and flexibility to transition away from third-party cookies in Chrome. The decision is weighty because Chrome is the choice of nearly two-thirds of internet users worldwide, according to market analytics.
Google planned to replace third-party cookies with a Privacy Sandbox, a bundle of APIs in development that prevent cross-site data tracking and improve user privacy. The sandbox also provides publishers and advertisers with data to grow online businesses. Google said it will continue to make Privacy Sandbox APIs available as a cookie alternative.
Regulators had put Google in a bind. On one side were U.K. and EU consumer privacy advocates who wanted more anonymized data collection; on the other were antitrust regulators who projected that an internet without Chrome's third-party cookies would turn Google's ad platform into a monopoly.
"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," wrote Anthony Chavez, vice president of Google Privacy Sandbox in the blog post. "We're discussing this new path with regulators and will engage with the industry as we roll this out."
Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller first predicted this outcome four years ago. Today, she said that there was never going to be a way Google could satisfy all the stakeholders on both sides of the third-party cookie adtech debate.
"The minute Google said it would deprecate third-party cookies -- in other words, 'everyone's cookies but ours' -- there was never going to be a winning path forward," Miller said. "The problem was never the cookie, it was the party that controlled the cookie. So, this has been a tug of war over control."
Consumer choice the future
This consumerization of privacy, similar to how Apple gives iOS users the option to turn off app data cross-tracking, is the likely best outcome of Google's years-long dithering over what to do with third-party cookies, said Heather Macaulay, president of MadTech, a digital consultancy.
Apple's Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) enables cross-app tracking. When a consumer first downloads an app, a menu pops up that gives the user a choice to disable it, which most do.
"With consumer choice, they're copying Apple's IDFA playbook in some ways," Macaulay said. "[Apple] is not going to take IDFA away, but they give consumers choice."
Macaulay added, however, she isn't completely convinced Google's dithering is over. Because of the pressures of consumer privacy advocates, Google could once again change its mind and produce a future plan to deprecate third-party cookies.
Both she and her colleague, MadTech founder and CEO Bob Walczak, said that few if any of their clients used Privacy Sandbox, although some had evaluated and tested it. Instead, they concentrated on using their own first-party data collected from customers to better personalize experiences. After all, third-party cookies were not designed to do a lot of things today's companies need from their adtech -- such as seamless understanding of when a customer moves between phone, laptop and tablet.
That approach, Miller said, is the best thing that will come out of the Privacy Sandbox experiment: Better personalization with first-party data because it works to drive business and pleases customers more than third-party browser cookies ever could.
The last five years have forced marketers and advertisers to examine the true business value of third-party cookies, which had been diminishing. They might bring some values moving forward, to supplement more granular first-party data a company owns.
"We have spent an awful lot of time rethinking what the data we get from third-party cookies really brings us," Miller said. "If we start to use that responsibly, if we start to use that in a way that truly does optimize the experience and truly does add some more personalization … that's not going to be a bad thing."
She also pointed out the downside of keeping third-party browser cookies around; it gives unscrupulous data brokers more time to sell personal information they scrape from unsuspecting consumers who unintentionally accept their cookies.
Industry, regulators react
Privacy Sandbox wasn't yet ready to go live, according to both the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) trade association and UK regulators, earlier this year. Google decided to delay deprecating third party cookies until 2025 after testing it on 1% of Chrome users.
Both organizations responded today to Google's third-party cookie plan.
"We are disappointed that Google has changed its plans and no longer intends to deprecate third party cookies from the Chrome Browser," said Stephen Bonner, Deputy Commissioner at the UK data privacy regulator Information Communications Office, in a statement.
"The new plan set out by Google is a significant change, and we will reflect on this new course of action when more detail is available. … We will monitor how the industry responds and consider regulatory action where systemic non-compliance is identified for all companies, including Google," Bonner wrote.
IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said the industry should continue working toward privacy-centric adtech without third-party cookies.
"It is important to await the exact implementation details of Chrome's elevated 'user choice' approach to third-party cookies, which may put the industry in the same place," Katsur said.
"The advertising ecosystem still requires multiple solutions to safely and effectively target consumers, including alternative IDs, server-side solutions, Privacy Sandbox and cookies. This isn't materially different from what is happening today, as approximately 25% of the browser market is already cookieless," he said.
Tech vendors still push first-party data
Many tech vendors acted on Google's decision to deprecate third-party cookies as an opportunity to sell users new marketing platforms. Many users bought into these alternatives in preparation for a cookieless future. Now that Google has decided not to deprecate them after all, the vendors are caught flat-footed.
Ted Sfikas, field CTO of Amplitude, a product analytics platform, said third-party cookies are already history, and that Google's decision won't revive them.
"Consumers expect not to be tracked," Sfikas said. "They didn't want to be tracked on mobile apps, and they're not going to opt into being tracked on their browser."
Dimitrios Koromilas, director of EMEA platform services at digital identity resolution vendor Acxiom, said 55% of companies in a survey his company commissioned had not yet prepared their adtech and martech stacks for an internet without third-party cookies.
Even with Google's latest decision on cookies, first-party data remains the new currency across the enterprise.
Dimitrios KoromilasDirector, EMEA platform services, Acxiom
"Despite Google reversing the deprecation of third-party cookies, brands shouldn't get complacent in what is an ever-more competitive consumer landscape," Koromilas said. "Even with Google's latest decision on cookies, first-party data remains the new currency across the enterprise, not just for the marketing department. Gathering information to create a holistic view of your customer base, which can only be done with first-party data, is pivotal in helping businesses stand out from an increasingly competitive crowd."
Google might not be deprecating the third-party cookie, but the latest plan to consumerize cookie control is basically the technology equivalent of doing so, said Drew Stein, CEO and founder of Audigent, a data activation, curation and identity platform.
Privacy Sandbox is still moving forward. Adopting it will be costly for the ad industry, which will have to invest in new tech that measures audience reach and other metrics that validate ad spending.
"Google is not trying to put the cat back in the bag … if anything, Google is the cat, and the industry continues to be its big ball of yarn," Stein said. "Google needs to meaningfully engage in fixing the Privacy Sandbox instead of toying with cookie deprecation."
Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.
