Google has confirmed its plans to end the use of tracking cookies in Chrome and said it will not replace this with any similar technology. The company said internet users want a higher level of privacy, making investments in tracking techniques unsustainable.
The company announced in 2019 already that it planned to phase out tracking techniques and has been working on other ways to allow advertising on Chrome without harming privacy. Google said it's regularly asked if it will follow other companies in the ad industry with adopting new kinds of identifiers to target internet users. "Today, we're making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products," said David Temkin, the company's Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust.
Advertisers don't need to track individual consumers across the web to get the benefits of digital advertising, Google said. The company pointed to advances in aggregation, anonymization, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies that "offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers". Instead Google is working on a technique to hide individuals within large crowds of people with common interests. This will be available for public testing from later this month.
Chrome users will still be able to opt in to direct relationships with advertisers and publishers. Google said it would continue to support first-party relationships on its ad platforms, where advertisers have direct connections with their own customers, and more support for such services will be added in future.
The online advertising industry group IAB said it was "disappointed that Google did not work more closely with the industry prior to announcing its latest plans". The IAB and its members have been working to address the growing privacy concerns through the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media launched last year. They invited Google and other platforms to join the effort to develop new online marketing methods.
