What Google Delaying the Removal of Third-Party Cookies Means for Food & Beverage

Google is again delaying its removal of third-party cookies on Chrome. After detailed feedback from key industry stakeholders and regulators, the company has decided to push the deadline from late 2024 to early 2025 - the latest in a number of delays.

"We recognise that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators, and developers, and we will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

But why exactly have they decided to delay the deadline?

Since announcing they would join organisations like Apple in phasing out cookies to improve consumer privacy protections, Google has been developing its privacy sandbox - a collection of technologies that can simultaneously protect consumer data whilst allowing companies to advertise. However, the immense use and value organisations have gained from Chrome's third-party cookies for so long has led to backlash from companies on Google's decision to remove them. And perhaps more importantly, Google is dependent on ads, so keeping advertisers happy is a must.

Google trialled the phasing out of third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users (around 30 million people) in January 2024. However, feedback from adtech organisations was negative, suggesting the new technology did not sufficiently replace the features and value they were used to with third-party cookies.

Regulatory concerns are proving to be a major obstacle, too. Google is prohibited from moving ahead with the third-party cookie removal until the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is happy with the new technology and does not view it as competitive.

The CMA has announced, however, that it is in the process of evaluating the proposed changes, and this process should be completed by mid 2024. Once the changes have been approved, Google has a period of 60 to 120 days before it can officially turn off third-party cookies on Chrome.

What does this mean for the food & beverage industry?

Essentially, more time. More time to learn, prepare, test and transition. Additionally, through Google's 'deprecation trials' programme, websites and services have more time to migrate away from third-party cookie dependencies until December 27th, 2024 (for non-advertising use cases that can demonstrate user impact and functional breakage).

However, Google has clarified the programme is designed to help with functional issues, and not to relieve general data collection challenges as advertising-related services are ineligible for the programme.

Amid these repeated delays, industry groups have raised concerns that restricting cross-site tracking could push websites toward more obscure privacy-invasive alternatives. The phaseout is essential in preventing covert user profiling across the internet, however, according to privacy advocates.

While the latest in a number of delays by Google to remove third-party cookies from Chrome may be frustrating for the food & beverage industry professionals, it at least provides more time to transition and be better prepared for when Google finally flips that switch in 2025.

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