Google's Turning Off Third-Party Cookies Entirely in the Second Half of 2024
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Google is about to launch its grand plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome that many websites use to track your activity across the web for profit.
Starting on January 4th, Google will start testing its new Tracking Protection feature that will eventually restrict website access to third-party cookies by default. It will come to a very small subset of Chrome users at the start, specifically to one percent of users globally. Afterward, Google plans to phase out the use of third-party cookies for all users in the second half of 2024.
[...] Google's approach to cookie-free advertising sounds helpful to both privacy-focused users and the overall advertiser business in comparison to other web browsers that take more stone-walled approaches to block cross-site tracking. However, Google's competitors and privacy advocates aren't fully convinced about its cookie-replacing tech.
Meanwhile, regulators like the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is keeping an eye on Google's new Tracking Protection to ensure it doesn't give the company an unfair advantage in selling its own ads. With that in mind, Google says it's hedging that H2 2024 target for turning the feature on globally in case it needs time to address any remaining competition concerns."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.