The Privacy Sandbox was a Google initiative to replace third-party cookies in Chrome with more privacy-friendly interfaces. Starting in 2019, Google built APIs such as Topics, Protected Audience and the Attribution Reporting API. In October 2025 Google retired most of them.
What happened?
Google originally planned to switch off third-party cookies in Chrome completely. The date was pushed back several times. In 2024 Google announced it would rely on user choice instead. On 17 October 2025 came the next step: Google retired most Privacy Sandbox technologies, citing low adoption, including Topics, Protected Audience, the Attribution Reporting API, IP Protection, Related Website Sets and Shared Storage.
In Google's words, Chrome will keep its current approach of offering users third-party cookie choice. According to Google, these remain, among others:
- CHIPS: partitioned cookies for embedded content
- FedCM: an interface for federated sign-in
- Private State Tokens: an anti-fraud mechanism without cross-site tracking
In parallel, Google is working in a W3C group on a shared standard for privacy-preserving attribution.
Source: Google Privacy Sandbox blog
What does this mean for advertisers?
The much-discussed "cookiepocalypse" in Chrome is not coming. If you built plans around it, you can relax, but do not expect too much. The main causes of missing conversion data lie elsewhere:
- visitors decline in the cookie banner
- Safari limits cookies and strips click IDs in certain situations
- ad blockers stop pixels from loading
Some 2026 articles still describe IP Protection for Chrome as upcoming. After Google's announcement, that is outdated.
What to focus on instead
Third-party cookies play an ever smaller role in conversion tracking anyway. What counts is first-party data, clean consent and sending conversions to ad platforms server-side.