Google Starts Discouraging Third-Party Cookies Users in Chrome: Here's What You Need to Know

JAKARTA - Google has begun efforts to reduce third-party cookies, small files that are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website.

The tech company randomly selected one percent of Chrome users worldwide - around 30 million people - to be the first to use a feature called 'Tracking Protection'.

As part of Google's controversial Privacy Sandbox, the move restricts sites from using third-party cookies to track users as they browse the web to serve relevant ads.

This comes several years after rival web browsers like Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox blocked third-party cookies by default.

Google has rolled out Tracking Protection to one percent of users as of Thursday January 4, as promised last month. If you're among those randomly selected for Tracking Protection, you'll see a notification in a pop-up box in Chrome for desktop or mobile.

The notification will read: 'You are one of the first to experience Tracking Protection, which limits sites from using third-party cookies to track you as you browse the web.'

These changes will occur automatically, so as you browse the web, third-party cookies will be restricted by default, limiting their ability to track you across websites.

If there's a particular reason you want third-party cookies to remain enabled in Chrome, you can click the eye icon in the search bar, which will have a slash across it.

After clicking, users can enable the option to accept cookies, which will remove the slash and display a message in the search bar that reads: 'Third-party cookies allowed'.

However, if you enable cookies, Google tells you that it will automatically disable them again after 90 days.

Even if you're not one of the affected one percent, the days of third-party cookies in Chrome are numbered. Google plans to completely phase out the use of third-party cookies when Tracking Protection arrives for all users in the second half of 2024, although this is subject to regulatory approval.

According to Statista, Chrome is used by more than 3.22 billion internet users, but many aren't even sure what cookies are or what their function is.

Third-party cookies are created when a user visits a website that includes elements from other sites, such as third-party images or advertising.

They differ from first-party cookies, which are created by the site a user is visiting and are often useful, as they allow the browser to remember important user information.

In a blog post last month, Google described third-party cookies as 'a fundamental part of the web for nearly three decades', but controversial because they track user activity across websites.

Google's issue with third-party cookies is that they are placed on a user's device by a website other than the one the user is visiting - usually by a digital advertising agency.

Google plans to replace third-party cookies with a new system that limits data sharing within its own organization, which it says is better for our privacy.

Basically, advertisers have to ask Chrome what topics they want to explore - like fashion, food, or travel - rather than having direct access to our browsing data.

However, this was not without controversy, as regulators feared this change would increase Google's dominance in the online advertising market.

Advertisers say losing cookies in the world's most popular browser will limit their ability to collect information to personalize ads and make them reliant on Google's user database.

Google's plans to ban third-party cookies for all users by 2024 are subject to addressing 'anti-monopoly' concerns raised by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

The regulator's former chief executive, Andrea Coscelli, said it would continue to 'closely monitor' the Silicon Valley tech giant and 'we do not take our work lightly'.

The European Union's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, also said in June that her agency's investigation into Google's introduction of a tool to block third-party cookies - as part of the company's 'Privacy Sandbox' initiative - would continue.