Tired of accepting cookies? Good news! Google Chrome is killing them off for 30 mn users

If you are like us, you probably hate it when you visit a website for the first time, and even before you have managed to read a word on the page, an annoying pop-up shows up asking you to accept or reject third-party cookies before continuing. There is good news for you if you do feel the same. Google also shares your sentiments and is planning to block them entirely from Google Chrome. But the reason is bigger than sheer annoyance. Google thinks it is not good enough for your privacy and wants to replace it with something better.

According to a report by Gizmodo, Google Chrome will block third-party cookies for 1 percent of its users starting on January 4. This is roughly about 30 million Google Chrome users. Google will do this through its Tracking Protection feature. The plan behind the blocking is to replace it with a different kind of tracking through its Privacy Sandbox project.

Google to get rid of third-party cookies

The Verge mentioned that the reason Google is replacing third-party cookies as user tracking tools with a different tracking tool is to anonymize user data while it tracks the user activity. This will both help protect users’ privacy and enable Google-provided APIs to conduct their ad business in a different way where it will be able to block cross-site tracking by advertisers. This stone-walling effort will end up giving more power to Google when brands display ads on websites.

This is why some regulators such as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are keeping a watchful eye to ensure that this shift does not give Google an unfair advantage in the market. Meanwhile, Google has also promised that it will not be unfairly sharing this data with advertisers to gain an advantage.

In a statement, CMA’s chief executive Andrea Coscelli said in a statement, “The commitments we have obtained from Google will promote competition, help to protect the ability of online publishers to raise money through advertising, and safeguard users’ privacy. While this is an important step, we are under no illusions that our work is done. We will keep a close eye on Google as it continues to develop these proposals”.