Google’s cookie-replacing Privacy Sandbox hits major milestone

Google’s Chrome browser is now one important step toward its goal of phasing out third-party cookies by the end of 2024. In a press release today, the search giant announced that its relevance and measurement APIs for Privacy Sandbox, your privacy-preserving alternative to cross-site tracking cookies: they’re now widely available. That means the APIs are available by default in Chrome, without setting any browser flags and without participating in a test.

Google says that 3 percent of Chrome users will be unaffected for now to allow the company to run A/B tests, expanding the general availability of the APIs to 100 percent of users “in the coming months.”

Chrome has also released new ad privacy controls that allow users to manage features of the Privacy Sandbox, such as customizing or disabling relevant ad themes that you can target. Most Chrome users shouldn’t see a noticeable difference in their browsing experience as a result of this milestone because it’s intended for developers. With Privacy Sandbox API Now generally available on Chrome, developers and ad providers can assess their readiness for the planned disabling of third-party cookies at scale across all their products and services.

Google says it has received “extensive industry feedback” on the Privacy Sandbox APIs and is unlikely to make significant changes before obsolescence of third-party cookies in the second half of next year. Before then, it plans to turn off support for third-party cookies for 1 percent of Chrome users in the first quarter of 2024, and a “optional test mode” which allows developers to simulate cookie staleness for testing purposes will be released later this year.