Google Confirms Bad News For 3 Billion Chrome Users—You Will Still Be Tracked

In a shock move, Google abruptly confirmed on Monday that its long-awaited killing of Chrome’s dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned. The company was struggling to agree on an approach with regulators that balanced its own interests with those of the wider marketing industry—but no one expected this.

“We are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice,” the company teased on July 22, before dropping its bombshell. “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.”

But before you ask too many questions as to what that means, we don’t yet know. It likely means you can choose between tracking cookies, Google’s semi-anonymous Topics API, and its semi-private browsing. You’ll be able to change your choice—which will apply across the web—at any time. But there’s still a catch—even this isn’t yet agreed. “We’re discussing this new path with regulators,” Google said, with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) replying “we will need to carefully consider Google’s new approach… We welcome views on Google’s revised approach, including possible implications for consumers and market outcomes.”

This is bad news for Chrome’s 3 billion users, most of whom will never change their settings and would be much better served by a browser that’s more private by default. This was the focus of Apple’s not-so-subtle attack ad on Chrome, dressed up as a pro-Safari promotion, which recreated scenes from Hitchcock’s The Birds to depict users being spied upon as they browse the web, before Safari comes to the rescue.

Ironically, just hours before this shock news, EFF warned that “Privacy Sandbox is Google’s way of letting advertisers keep targeting ads based on your online behavior, even after Chrome completes its long overdue phaseout of third-party cookies.”

Google’s Privacy Sandbox program, which was intended to find a replacement for tracking cookies, has seemed plagued since its inception with various false starts. The latest iteration has been the collation of users into like-minded groups, but Apple made its view clear in a WebKit update released alongside its attack ads that such a move would not prevent digital fingerprinting as promised.

“We look forward to continued collaboration with the ecosystem on the next phase of the journey to a more private web,” Google signed off its announcement. But its decision to keep tracking cookies in place, while admitting that plan B toward the goal of a more private web has failed, risks sounding hollow. Let’s not forget, Google’s promise to kill tracking cookies celebrated its fourth birthday earlier this year.

EFF warns that Google’s decision “underscores their ongoing commitment to profits over user privacy. Safari and Firefox have blocked third-party cookies by default since 2020, when Google pledged to do the same. Third-party cookies are one of the most pervasive tracking technologies, enabling advertising companies and data brokers to collect and sell information about users’ online activities.”

Regulators are now coming to terms with this shock decision from Google—it has clearly caught them off-guard. The CMA says that “given these developments, we will not publish our planned quarterly update report at the end of this month.” How that organization responds will be critical—it is the ongoing debate with the CMA that has caused so much angst for Google’s Privacy Sandbox deployment.

Meanwhile, the U.K.’s Information Commissioner says “we are disappointed that Google has changed its plans and no longer intends to deprecate third party cookies from the Chrome Browser. From the start of Google’s Sandbox project in 2019, it has been our view that blocking third party cookies would be a positive step for consumers. 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.”

Contrast this with the view from the other side of the fence, the digital trackers. The Washington-based NAI is a “self–regulatory association dedicated to responsible data collection and its use for digital advertising.” Unsurprisingly it welcomed the news, “supporting Google’s decision to maintain third-party cookie support while enhancing user transparency and control,” and adding that “the deprecation of third-party cookie support by Chrome in the absence of alternative technologies that provide for equivalent scale and interoperability would have posed a significant threat to competition in advertising that is essential to the free and open internet.”

You can expect significant further responses to this story over the coming days.