For decades, the online ad industry has relied on third-party internet cookies to track our web browsing activities in an effort to serve up relevant ads. But now the ad-tracking technology is facing possible extinction at the hands of Google, which is aiming to ban third-party cookies from Chrome within two years.
The goal is render the cookies "obsolete" in favor of other approaches that can better protect users' privacy without disrupting the online ad industry, Google Chrome's engineering director Justin Schuh on Tuesday. "Users are demanding greater privacy—including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used—and it's clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands," he wrote in a blog post.
Specifically, Google wants to do away with third-party cookies that digital advertisers can place in your web browser to track you from site to site. The approach, also known as "cross-site tracking," can let online marketers bombard you with the same ads, even though you're moving from one destination to another, which can result in a creepy experience.
Just to be very clear on this point: This is not about blocking a subset of 3P cookies via lists and/or heuristics. This announcement is that we are going to remove 3P cookies and related tracking mechanisms entirely. https://t.co/bXDB0pr89G — Justin Schuh ?? (@justinschuh) January 14, 2020
The same technologies also mean the ad industry can theoretically track what millions of users are doing on the web without their consent. It's why other browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari, have decided to block third-party cookies by default at a time when concerns about digital privacy are growing. The only problem is that the entire internet ecosystem—from news web sites to e-commerce providers and Google itself—relies on user tracking to serve up relevant ads as a way to generate revenue.
"Some browsers have reacted to these concerns by blocking third-party cookies, but we believe this has unintended consequences that can negatively impact both users and the web ecosystem," Schuh wrote on Tuesday.
In response, Google's Chrome team is trying to come up with a compromise solution that can satisfy both the advertising industry and consumers. In August, the company previewed what this might look like by announcing Privacy Sandbox, a series of proposals to track consumers' online activities, but only in a bulk manner, thereby preventing an advertiser from profiling users individually.
Chrome is the most popular web browser on the planet with a 63 percent share. So the push to phase out third-party cookies will shake up the advertising model for websites and businesses across the globe, which may raise antitrust complaints. But Google doesn't plan on making the changes unilaterally. The goal is to make the Privacy Sandbox an open standard on which industry players can all submit feedback.
"We cannot get there alone, and that's why we need the ecosystem to engage on these proposals. We plan to start the first origin trials by the end of this year," Schuh said.
His fear is that without third-party cookies, the ad industry will resort to more invasive forms of tracking that users cannot escape. For instance, currently, you can tell the Chrome browser's privacy and security settings to delete all the cookies. However, advertising firms can work around the cookie blocking by using a technique called "fingerprinting" to try and identify your internet presence. This can include profiling your computer's specs, the add-ons, fonts installed, and browser preferences when you visit a website. In response, Chrome, Firefox and Safari are all working to block fingerprinting mechanisms from their browsers.