Google to Push Forward with Chrome Tracking Protection in 2024

Google announced that it will begin testing its controversial new Tracking Protection feature in the stable version of Chrome on January 4, 2024, starting with 1 percent of users. It will then phase in the feature over time and expects it to be fully deployed globally in the second half of next year.

“Tracking Protection is a new feature that limits cross-site tracking by restricting website access to third-party cookies by default,” Google vice president Anthony Chavez writes in the announcement post. “It’s a key milestone in our Privacy Sandbox initiative to phase out third-party cookies for everyone in the second half of 2024, subject to addressing any remaining competition concerns from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.”

According to Google—and to be clear, every Chromium-based browser maker except for Microsoft intends to block this functionality—its Privacy Sandbox represents “a responsible approach to phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome.” It includes new APIs for developers to support “legitimate use cases” for cross-site tracking while “preserving user privacy.”

Resistance to this functionality has been fierce: Google started down this path in 2019 with a technology called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which critics correctly panned for its privacy-averse tracking and advertiser-friendly functionality. And so Google developed Tracking Protection as a replacement in a bid to regain trust. But Tracking Protection is still designed to balance the needs of users and advertisers, and it should be viewed as just another way to track your activities online.

In any event, Tracking Protection will be rolled out randomly to users, and you’ll see a notification in Chrome when you’re chosen.