Expanding testing for the Privacy Sandbox for the Web

Giving businesses the tools they need to succeed online is crucial to the future of the open web. Privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies and other forms of cross-site tracking are what prompted us to start the Privacy Sandbox. Over the past few months, we've released a number of trial versions of Privacy Sandbox in Chrome for developers to try out.

We reached an agreement with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority on how we develop our designs after working closely with developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators.

There is a need for more time to evaluate and test the Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies. The feedback is in line with our commitment to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has enough time to adopt them. This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive without relying on cross-site tracking.

Before disabling third-party cookies in chrome, we need to expand the testing windows for Privacy Sandbox.

The Privacy Sandbox trials will expand to millions of users around the world in August, and we will gradually increase the trial population throughout the rest of the year. Users will be shown a prompt before they are added to the trials. We will listen and respond to feedback as the web community tests these.

We expect the Privacy Sandbox to be available in Chrome by the third quarter of 2023. We plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of the century.

We're grateful to be working with companies across the industry who are invested in developing privacy first experiences on the web, and will be testing Privacy Sandbox in the coming months.

The Privacy Sandbox initiative is an ambitious undertaking for the entire industry and we look forward to engaging with the web community as testing expands.