Google has revealed that it will end support for third-party cookies in Chrome after years of working on that plan

As reported by 9to5Google, the search giant will “phase out support” for third-party cookies, cross-site tracking identifiers, fingerprinting, and other methods used to track people on the Internet, first in 2020 “ plan According to Google's original plan, the company wanted to replace these outdated methods with more privacy-friendly alternatives without unduly disrupting businesses that specialize in online advertising

Unfortunately, the plan, which was originally supposed to be completed by 2022, was postponed to 2023, 2024, and now, with a third postponement announced in April of this year, to sometime in 2025

Google moved the plan forward a bit in January when it began testing a new tracking protection feature in Chrome It restricts sites from using third-party cookies to track Chrome users

Now, however, the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome appears to be completely over Here is everything you need to know about this major reversal and how it affects you if you use Chrome

In a new blog post, Anthony Chavez, vice president of Google's Privacy Sandbox Initiative, provides further insight into why the company abruptly dropped plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome and instead He explained what it will do:

The search giant's Privacy Sandbox API has the potential to improve online privacy while maintaining ad-supported content, but implementing it “will require a great deal of work by many participants, and it will require a lot of work by many participants”

Chavez said that the company's new API “is a great example of the kind of work that can be done by many participants, publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising”

For this reason, Google plans instead to “introduce a new experience in Chrome” that will allow users to make informed choices about third-party cookies Chrome users will be able to adjust this choice at any time It is worth noting that

As part of the privacy controls being added to Chrome, Google plans to announce a new feature called IP Protection that will work in Incognito mode Essentially, this feature anonymizes your IP address and protects it from being used by third parties for things like web-wide cross-site tracking

Like many good VPN services, IP Protection anonymizes Chrome traffic using a 2-hop privacy proxy However, it will not be available as a default setting in Chrome until next year

More will be forthcoming from Google on this as Google works to improve the Privacy Sandbox API as well as Chrome's privacy protection