(Paris) Google on Thursday began restricting third-party cookies for some users of its Chrome browser, beginning a transition toward eliminating these trackers criticized for their intrusive nature, a decision announced since 2020.
Posted at 6:54 am
“As previously announced, Chrome is limiting third-party cookies to 1% of its users by default to facilitate testing before increasing the capacity to 100% of users from Q3 2024,” the American giant said in a statement. Blog entry.
Google said the complete ban on third-party cookies could only be effective after consultation with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on “potential competition issues”.
Cookies, those computer files used in particular to track the navigation of Internet users and offer them targeted advertising, have been more regulated since the introduction of several standards, in particular the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Union in 2016 as well as California regulations.
The term “third-party cookies” refers to cookies that come from the websites you visit and not from the browser itself.
Google announced in January 2020 that it would phase out these third-party cookies within two years. The implementation of this reform was postponed several times before it came into force at the beginning of January.
Google has been working for several years on an alternative system to cookies that is tied to the browser and not to the websites visited. Instead of targeting internet users individually, advertisers target audience segments (“FLoCs”) that include hundreds or thousands of people.