Google is in the process of removing support for third-party cookies from the Chrome browser, after implementing the “Privacy Sandbox” as a partial replacement. Microsoft has announced that it will also start blocking third-party cookies in its web browser.
Third-party tracking cookies have been a way to store data across websites for decades, but they have many privacy issues, which is why Firefox started blocking them by default in 2022. Google spent several years developing a replacement that was at least somewhat more privacy-friendly, and the end result was the Privacy Sandbox API. Now that the Privacy Sandbox is fully rolled out, Google is slowly turning off third-party cookies in Chrome, starting with 1% of users this past January.
Microsoft’s Edge browser has mostly followed Google’s lead with web technologies and browser extensions—it is based on Chrome, after all. Microsoft announced in a blog post today that it will also start turning off third-party cookies, though a full timeline has not been revealed.
Microsoft said, “Microsoft Edge will start experimenting with deprecating third-party cookies in the coming months, targeting less than 1% of non-managed device users, and continue throughout 2024. This will enable us to measure and evaluate the various impacts to customers and partners, and encourage the ecosystem to proactively prepare for the eventual removal.”
Interestingly, Microsoft is not adopting the same Privacy Sandbox technology as Chrome to replace tracking cookies. Instead, the company is proposing a new Ad Selection API, which won’t even be available for sites to test until the second half of 2024. The goal is still roughly the same as Google’s technology—allow web advertisements to function while protecting at least some user privacy—but Microsoft apparently has different ideas for how online ads should work.
You can already turn off third-party cookies from the Edge settings, but it’s not the default behavior, and that setting also turns off all other types of cross-website storage. The upcoming update will turn off third-party cookies, but keep other cross-website storage in place (such as explicitly partitioned cookies), unless you flip that settings switch that turns off everything.
Source: Microsoft Edge Blog
