New step by Google to end third-party cookies, those information indicators that are saved in Internet browsers as web pages are visited and that allow users to be tracked. Since the application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, each time a page is visited, consent must be given about the cookies that are accepted. The search engine has decided that it will eliminate them completely and will begin the first quarter of 2024, by removing them for 1% of Chrome users.
The measure is part of its privacy project called Privacy Sandbox and this trial period will end around the fourth quarter of 2024, when a phase will begin in which developers will be able to simulate the removal of third-party cookies in Chrome for a configurable percentage of its users. That way, according to Google, they will be able to perform controlled tests with high levels of traffic without third-party cookies.
The cookie system, born at the beginning of the development of the Internet, has always been a way of directing advertising towards a user, but its use raises serious questions about privacy issues. Google’s business is largely in the inclusion of ads based on the knowledge that cookies give. To maintain it, the company is going to adopt a different strategy.
Instead of monitoring users across the web for their interests, it will bring them together in large groups with similar interests. Google claims that “instead of measuring users’ response to ads so that their identity can be revealed, their anonymity can be maintained by limiting the amount of data that can be shared about them.” In addition, it proposes that companies do not collect information from users to show them ads, but that the data be kept on each person’s device to preserve privacy.
Google’s plan has been drawn up after consultation with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which came to sue it, and with which it committed to a series of measures to improve the Privacy Sandbox.
