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.
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“As previously announced, Chrome will limit the use of third-party cookies to 1% of its users by default to facilitate testing before increasing the capacity to 100% of users from Q3 2020,” the American giant said in a statement Explanation. Blog entry.
Google has made it clear that the complete ban on third-party cookies can only be effective after the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has advised 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 had committed to 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 individual internet users, advertisers target audience segments (“FLoCs”) that include hundreds or thousands of people.