Google’s decision to abandon a stand-alone prompt for third-party cookies in Chrome is a “bitter disappointment” for the UK’s privacy watchdog, a UK official told MLex today. Google's announcement comes when the company faces regulatory scrutiny in the US. Google and the US government this week began a projected three-week antitrust trial. The US DOJ has said Google should be made to divest its Chrome browser and forced to keep away from the browser market for the next five years.
Google’s decision to abandon a stand-alone prompt for third-party cookies in Chrome is a “bitter disappointment” for the UK’s privacy watchdog, a UK official told MLex today.Google said yesterday that it has decided to “maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies” (see here).
The US search and advertising giant said in a blog post that users “can continue to choose the best option for themselves in Chrome’s Privacy and Security Settings.”
The Alphabet unit has been working since 2019 on plans to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with a new system in which users would consent to ads being targeted based on broad topics.
Since February 2022, Google has been under scrutiny in the UK by the Competition and Markets Authority, which has been reviewing whether its “Privacy Sandbox” effort might lead to ad spending becoming concentrated within its advertising ecosystem at the expense of competitors.
Last July, the US tech giant said it is abandoning its plan to “deprecate” third-party cookies but decided to maintain its plans to offer the topics system (see here). The company said "Chrome is moving towards a new experience that lets people make an informed choice with respect to third-party cookies." Google didn't elaborate on how that informed choice would be made.
At the time, UK Information Commissioner John Edwards expressed his disappointment at the move (see here and here).
Stephen Almond, the ICO’s director of technology and innovation, repeated the ICO's concerns about Google’s plans during an interview.
“We at the ICO are bitterly disappointed that Google is not going to pursue the full ambitions of the privacy sandbox project, as it announced in the late 20-teens, where it set out a new vision for a more privacy-preserving Internet,” Almond told MLex on the sidelines of a conference* in Washington, DC.
“We continue to work very closely with the CMA in respect of Google's advertising model,” he said.
Google's announcement comes when the company faces regulatory scrutiny in the US. Google and the US government this week began a three-week antitrust trial. The Department of Justice has said Google should be made to divest Chrome and forced to keep away from the browser market for the next five years.
Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox at Google, wrote in the blog post that Google plans to continue working on the Privacy Sandbox APIs.
“We’ve made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies,” he said.
Chrome abandoned its plans to phase out third-party cookies after advertisers raised concerns that their removal would limit their ability to collect information for targeted ads.
In a report last year, the CMA said adtech and publisher groups said they were worried that competition concerns remain, “and that we should continue to oversee Google's new approach."
* IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2025, Washington, DC, April 22-24, 2025.
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