This week, Google moves to the next phase of its gradual elimination program for web tracking cookies. The company will implement a new “Tracking Protection” option that will allow Chrome users to restrict the data they share when visiting a website.
Through Tracking Protection, third-party data tracking will be automatically limited, while giving users more options to control what data they provide through cookie information.
“On January 4th, we will start testing Tracking Protection, a new feature that limits cross-site tracking by default by restricting websites’ access to third-party cookies,” says Google in a blog post.
“We will make it available to 1% of Chrome users worldwide, a key milestone in our Privacy Sandbox initiative to gradually eliminate third-party cookies for everyone in the second half of 2024, provided that the UK Competition and Markets Authority resolves any remaining competition issues.”
The objective of the new measure is to learn more about how to optimize the user experience without tracking, and at the same time, give users more options to limit the use of their personal data, if they wish.
When Tracking Protection is enabled, some web pages may not load correctly, so users will also have the option to temporarily re-enable third-party cookies for that specific website.
The elimination of cookies is one more step towards reviewing web data practices and changing the way web pages work in this regard, which will ultimately completely change the advertising landscape and the way user behaviors are measured.
