Google has announced that its Privacy Sandbox for the Web is now available to the majority of Chrome users. This initiative aims to enhance online privacy while ensuring access to information remains intact.
Introduced in 2019, Privacy Sandbox has evolved through collaboration with various stakeholders, including publishers, developers, and consumers. The objective is to find privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies, combating invasive tactics like fingerprinting.
User-Centric Ad Privacy Controls
Google has introduced new Ad privacy controls in Chrome, empowering users to personalize their ad experiences. Users can customize their ad preferences, enable specific relevance and measurement APIs, and more by visiting Settings > Privacy and security > Ad privacy controls in Chrome.
Google acknowledges the industry-wide collaboration that made this milestone possible. They emphasize the ongoing work to improve privacy for web ads.
Preparing for Cookie Deprecation
Privacy Sandbox technologies are now stable for scaled use. Companies can integrate these technologies into their solutions and assess readiness for the planned deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome by the second half of 2024.
Testing and Simulation
Starting in Q4 of 2023, Google will enable the industry to simulate the effects of third-party cookie deprecation. In Q1 of 2024, they will turn off third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users to evaluate the Privacy Sandbox APIs’ effectiveness.
Google looks forward to partnering with the industry during the transition away from third-party cookies, supporting the adoption of Privacy Sandbox APIs, and evaluating their effectiveness through scaled testing.
Availability
Google has announced that they will gradually expand the general availability of their product to all users over the coming months. However, they will initially leave approximately 3% of users unaffected by the change in order to conduct adequate A/B testing.
Announcing the updates, Anthony Chavez, VP, Privacy Sandbox, said:
Today, we celebrate a major achievement for the Web’s Privacy Sandbox as we reach the ‘general availability’ stage for the relevance and measurement APIs on Chrome. This milestone marks a significant step towards a more private web.
With the Privacy Sandbox APIs now available to the majority of Chrome users, advertising providers and developers can scale their usage of these new technologies within their products and services.