After years of threatening to remove third-party cookies, Google today announced that it is keeping them in Chrome.
“We’ve made the choice to take care of our current approach to offering users third-party cookie alternative in Chrome, and is not going to be rolling out a brand new standalone prompt for third-party cookies,” wrote Anthony Chavez, vice chairman of Privacy Sandbox at Google, in a blog post today. “Users can proceed to decide on the very best option for themselves in Chrome’s Privacy and Security Settings.
In July, Google announced that it was pausing plans to finish use of the trackers. That happened after advertisers identified that eliminating cookies would make them depending on Google’s user data to personalize ads.
Today’s announcement comes after the Justice Department asked the Google search antitrust trial judge to spin off Chrome from Google.
Some marketers are already blasting the move.
“At a time when consumers are more aware than ever of how they’re tracked online, doubling down on cookies sends the unsuitable message,” said Adam Schenkel, EVP of worldwide platform strategy and operations at GumGum. “Brands should take this as a wake-up call to diversify their ad strategies now before audience trust erodes further.”
Resources invested
There’s little doubt Google was serious about eliminating cookies. The company invested considerable resources in anticipation of their disappearance. Most notably, it replaced its Universal Analytics program, which is dependent upon cookies, with Google Analytics 4, which doesn’t.
Depending in your level of cynicism, the news was either shocking or long-expected.
The day before the announcement, Bradley Keefer, CRO of Keen Decision Systems, said he expected the corporate to say something about cookies to distract from its latest antitrust loss.
“You’re going to see Google bring back cookie deprecation,” he said. “That’s their favorite PR thing from the last five years.”
Dig deeper: It’s time to re-think our rejection of third-party cookies
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