This Tuesday, Google definitively confirmed the continued use of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. This marks the end of a series of twists and turns that lasted nearly five years.
Google is ending the “suspense.” On Tuesday, April 22, 2025, the Californian company announced that it will finally retain third-party cookies in its Chrome browser —these digital trackers that collect data on user profiles for advertising, retargeting, and audience measurement purposes. This long-awaited decision definitively clarifies its position in a case where it has been under particular scrutiny.
An expected decision for a project that is drifting
Expected to disappear in 2025, after several successive postponements, third-party cookies, which are already systematically refused by around 39% of Internet users according to the CNIL, will therefore not be blocked by default by Google, which has chosen not to follow the path traced by Safari, then Firefox. Less crucial than before for the Mountain View firm, which now captures a large part of the data via the accounts connected to its services, they nevertheless remain valuable for advertisers and advertisers, particularly for measuring performance.
“In talking to the ecosystem – publishers, developers, regulators and advertising players – it is clear that there are divergent views” on the impact of the availability of third-party cookies, Anthony Chavez justified in a blog post. According to the vice president in charge of Privacy Sandbox, Google’s project to offer technical alternatives to third-party cookies, which should also be abandoned soon – “a lot has changed since the Privacy Sandbox initiative was announced in 2019.” He mentions in particular the adoption of “privacy-enhancing” technologies, the evolution of the regulatory framework and the emergence of AI. “For all these reasons, we have decided to maintain our current approach,” he concludes, consisting of “leaving the choice to the user.”
User choice, but no cookie blocking tool
The announcement will come as no surprise, but it does have the merit of definitively clarifying Google’s position. Mentioned as early as 2020, the project to eliminate third-party cookies was weakened in the summer of 2024, or even almost buried, when the Californian company indicated that it would ultimately not block cookies by default on its web browser, which is used by more than 66% of Internet users worldwide, according to StatCounter.
At the time, Google was talking about a “new experience in Chrome” that would allow users to make “an informed choice” that would apply to “their entire web browsing experience.” This project also appears to have been abandoned. “We will therefore not be rolling out a new pop-up window dedicated [to third-party cookies],” Chavez said. ” Users can continue to choose the option that suits them best in Chrome’s Privacy and Security settings.”
