If I offered you an alternative to conventional tracking cookies on the web, you might be interested, especially if you care about digital privacy. If I told you it was made by Google, the biggest provider of advertising and tracking data on the planet, you might be a lot less interested. Maybe that’s why Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” flopped so hard.
Six years after proposing the new system as an alternative to digital cookie files that would boldly replace the decades-old cookie system on the dominating Chrome browser, Google has officially canned the project. The company’s Vice President of Privacy Sandbox Anthony Chavez, who presumably will be looking for a new title, announced it on the system’s official blog (spotted by Engadget). Google decided to give up on the technology “after evaluating ecosystem feedback about their expected value and in light of their low levels of adoption,” Chavez said.
Privacy Sandbox was controversial from the very start, as Google proposed replacing cookies with a grouped user approach called “Federated Learning of Cohorts” that allegedly maintained a greater degree of user anonymity. In addition to doubts that Google could be trusted to control even more data used for tracking and advertising, critics alleged that the system could actually be combined with conventional cookies to make even more detailed tracking of users possible. It surely didn’t help that Google was trying to use its position as the owner of Chrome—the world’s most popular web browser—to push the new system through. (Not a great look if you’re fighting entirely justified accusations of monopolistic practices.)
Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft all objected for Firefox, Safari, and Edge browsers, respectively, and independent browsers also disabled the feature for the sake of their users. But even if you don’t care about privacy, trying to replace a system that’s so ingrained and essential to the web was a tall order. Google significantly delayed its plans for a hard switchover a few years ago, then made it optional after that.
