Anthony Chavez

You know that choice mechanism that Google said it was planning to release for third-party cookies in Chrome? Well, it’s not happening.

Google just shared a teeny tiny bit more info about its planned consent mechanism for Chrome, which will be “a one-time global prompt.” Pause for amazed silence (lol).

But cookies aside – and don’t forget to leave a few real ones out for Santa – there were lots of other big privacy developments in 2024. Here are some of the highlights.

Google is still figuring out what a cookie opt-in or opt-out model would look like — and how it would affect development and adoption for the Chrome Privacy Sandbox.

You read that headline right: Google is seriously considering scrapping its plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome. Instead, it’s proposing some kind of TBD opt-out tool for third-party cookies.

As bold and ambitious as Privacy Sandbox is, it’s rolling out with a lot of confusion and ambiguity. And there’s plenty about the new paradigm that we don’t currently understand.

In today’s newsletter: The CMA comes out with an updated evaluation of Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox proposals; the IAB talks Privacy Sandbox with Google; and Temu may be a shell company, but its ad spend keeps skyrocketing.

Mark your calendars for Jan. 4, 2024 all you deprecation skeptics. On Jan. 4, Google will begin cutting off third-party cookie access for 1% of a randomly selected group of Chrome users globally.

Farewell, cookies, as you fly ever so slowly to that big third party in the sky. On Thursday, Google announced that the targeting and measurement APIs in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox are generally available for the majority of Chrome users.

Third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome has been delayed so many times it’s become a punchline. But progress in the Android Privacy Sandbox is proceeding apace.