Several years ago, Google took the plunge into replacing third-party cookies in its Chrome browser (the browser with the largest user base by far), with the intention of offering the Privacy Sandbox as a replacement. Now, Google has announced an update to the Privacy Sandbox that will now be an optional feature rather than replacing third-party cookies altogether, which is a significant U-turn from its previous strategy.
According to Google, the Privacy Sandbox is an effort to improve user privacy while also balancing the concerns of publishers and advertisers. Google’s hope was to gain the support of all directly interested parties by seemingly instituting a new privacy standard and eliminating its reliance on third-party cookies. Especially considering the fact that, as of this writing, Google Chrome holds nearly two-thirds of the browser market share (according to StatCounter), its goal was to significantly reshape a key part of how online advertising works.
Many media outlets are reporting that this is a drastic change that could indicate that Google has lost confidence in its strategy, but as Google itself admits (to a certain degree), this move was largely the result of potential pressure from regulators, publishers, “advertising industry players” (which, let’s be honest, means paying advertisers) and other stakeholders.
The new optional status of the Privacy Sandbox
So, as things stand now, both the Privacy Sandbox and third-party cookies will be options that coexist for users. Third-party cookies are very important when it comes to online advertising, as they are integrated into the web's own mechanisms and track users' movement and behavior as they navigate different sites. This allows advertisers to make their advertising more targeted and much more effective.
Google claims not to sell cookie data (directly), but it seems to be getting as close to doing so indirectly as possible. PCWorld notes that its practices, like Google's with third-party cookies, are the ones that have drawn a lot of criticism, as websites are riddled with hundreds of tracking points to collect data.
While the data itself may not be sold, companies like Google create collective profiles and identify hyper-specific advertising targets that do These are then sold to advertisers. This practice is sometimes seen as very negative because it is possibly an overreach and a lack of respect for individual user privacy, which has earned companies like Google a certain reputation.
With third-party cookies, Google creates individual profiles of users, analyses data related to things like demographics and interests, and then allows advertisers to target their ads that way. It also auctions off advertising space it deems lucrative based on your data (as reported in this more detailed analysis of Google’s practices by the Electronic Frontier Foundation). To counter this, Google proposed the Privacy Sandbox to improve online user privacy in Chrome and Android apps.
Privacy Sandbox's proposal was to replace its individual cookie practices with broad, semi-anonymous blocks of users drawn from a variety of demographic factors. PCWorld notes that current cookie tracking essentially identifies a specific individual and tracks them, while Google's new approach would likely be gentler with larger, cumulative blocks of cookies.
Privacy Sandbox: Dead in the water or hidden in the depths?
Google is preparing to offer users both the option to continue allowing third-party cookies and the option to try out the Privacy Sandbox. From now on, users will also be able to switch between the two at any time, and the fact that Google hasn’t completely scrapped it tells me that the search engine giant hasn’t given up on its mission entirely. The option isn’t yet available to users, nor do we know when it will be, and Google has said that the Privacy Sandbox is still being reviewed with input from regulators, so it’s subject to change.
We also don’t know what this will look like from the advertiser side, and whether conventional third-party cookies will be distinguished from Privacy Sandbox information. We’ll have to see if the Privacy Sandbox option is ever added to Chrome, but it seems like it has a ways to go in convincing market competitors and data regulators, advertisers, its peers at tech companies, and privacy advocates (among many others) before that becomes the case.
If Google wins all (or at least most) of these bids, third-party cookies could face competition again one day, but until then, they will remain the status quo.
