(Paris) Google on Thursday began restricting third-party cookies for some users of its Chrome browser, in order to begin the transition towards abandoning these trackers that have been criticized for their intrusive nature, a decision that has been announced since 2020.
“As previously announced, Chrome limits third-party cookies to 1% of its users by default to facilitate testing, before scaling up to 100% of users starting in 3H Quarter 2024,” the American giant noted in a post on its blog.
Google has determined that a complete abandonment of third-party cookies can only be effective after consulting the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on “potential competition issues”.
Cookies, which are computer files used specifically to track the movement of Internet users and deliver targeted advertising to them, have seen their use become more regulated since the implementation of several standards, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established by the European Union. Union in 2016, in addition to California regulations.
The term “third-party cookies” is used to refer to cookies that come from websites visited and not from the browser itself.
Google announced in January 2020 that it was moving toward abandoning third-party cookies within two years. The implementation of this reform was postponed several times, before it came into effect at the beginning of January.
Google has been working on an alternative cookie system for several years, linked to the browser and not to the sites visited. Instead of targeting individual Internet users, advertisers target audience segments (“FLoCs”) consisting of hundreds or thousands of people.
