Google firms-up cookie phase-out timeline: 1% of Chrome users to go cookieless in Q1 2024

Google has announced it will begin to phase-out third-party cookies in Q1 2024, starting with Chrome disabling third-party cookies for 1% of users to facilitate testing before ramping up to 100% of users by the middle of Q3 2024.

In a blog post, Rowan Merewood, developer relations for Privacy Sandbox at Google, said the purpose of the staggered phaseout is to “reduce cross-site tracking while still enabling the functionality that keeps online content and services freely accessible by everyone”.

He added: “Deprecating and removing third-party cookies encapsulates the challenge, as they enable critical functionality across sign-in, fraud protection, advertising, and generally the ability to embed rich, third-party content in your sites—but at the same time they're also the key enablers of cross-site tracking.”

Organisations should view the initial stages of the phaseout in early next year as an opportunity to test their capabilities for handling the loss of third-party cookies.

The firming up of Google’s depreciation timeline comes on the heels of it releasing a range of APIs, intended to provide a “privacy-focused alternative to today’s status quo for use cases like identity, advertising, and fraud detection.”

This announcement is the first to provide a firm timeline for advertisers and publishers to take note of. It means that all website owners will face cookieless users in 2024, regardless of whether they opted-in to Google’s tests at the end of this year, and be forced to respond.

More so than ever, it’s time to put a plan in place for the death of the cookie, because it appears Google is done extending deadlines.