Google announced it is delaying its plans to block third-party cookies to late 2023 and will paused testing of FLoC, its cookieless alternative. Google said "it's become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right."
Initially the plan was for Chrome to block third-party cookies by late 2022 but now that has been moved to start the process of blocking cookies in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023.
Google also said it will pause testing FLoC, its cookieless alternative. Google said "we plan to conclude this origin trial in the coming weeks and incorporate input, before advancing to further ecosystem testing."
Here is how Google documented the staged launch:
- Stage 1 (Starting late-2022): Once testing is complete and APIs are launched in Chrome, we will announce the start of stage 1. During stage 1, publishers and the advertising industry will have time to migrate their services. We expect this stage to last for nine months, and we will monitor adoption and feedback carefully before moving to stage 2.
- Stage 2 (Starting mid-2023): Chrome will phase out support for third-party cookies over a three month period finishing in late 2023.
Of course, all the resistance about Google's FLoC plans from big companies like Mozilla, WordPress, Amazon and others probably had something to do with this.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
