British Regulators Monitoring Google’s Decision to Continue Allowing Third-Party Cookies

British regulators are reportedly monitoring Google and the digital advertising industry after the tech giant said Monday (July 22) that it will continue to allow cookies in its Chrome browser, while allowing users to turn them on or off.

Google had pledged in 2020 to eliminate all cross-website cookies within two years, and its announcement on Monday that it would not do so was unexpected, the Financial Times (FT) reported Tuesday (July 23).

Stephen Bonner, deputy commission of the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), told the FT that the regulator was “disappointed” by the change announced by Google, that it will monitor the digital advertising industry and that it will “consider regulatory action where systemic noncompliance is identified for all companies including Google.”

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said that it is “considering the impact of this announcement” and welcomes public comment, per the report.

Google’s earlier plans to eliminate cookies aimed to protect user privacy by getting rid of that tracking technology, according to the report.

However, those plans were opposed by online advertisers, who use cookies to monitor users’ movements across websites and target them with personalized ads, the report said.

Google had pushed back its plans in the past in an effort to give advertisers more time to adjust to the planned elimination of cookies, per the report. As recently as February, the company said it still planned to turn off all cookies by the end of 2024.

When announcing the company’s change of plans on Monday, Google’s manager in charge of its Privacy Sandbox, Anthony Chavez, wrote in an update that the company recognizes that the transition would require “significant work by many participants and will have an impact on publishers, advertisers and everyone involved in online advertising.”

Chavez added that allowing users an informed choice in their web browsing, rather than deprecating third-party cookies, is an approach that “elevates user choice.”

“We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out,” Chavez wrote.

Google had also faced questions from regulators about its earlier plans to eliminate third-party cookies. The company said in April that it delayed its plans because a British regulator expressed concerns about Google’s proposed alternative to using cookies.