Google’s Privacy Sandbox: What you needed to know, before its demise
Given the saga of third-party cookies, Google's shutdown of Privacy Sandbox last week was inevitable..
Google officially killed its Privacy Sandbox, the once-flagship initiative aimed at replacing third-party cookies with privacy-preserving ad technologies.
Privacy Sandbox was Google’s answer to growing privacy regulation and industry backlash against cross-site tracking — but its complexity, limited adoption and regulatory scrutiny stalled momentum.
In a blog post Friday, Anthony Chavez, VP of privacy sandbox, confirmed that Google is retiring 10 remaining Sandbox APIs, including Attribution Reporting, Topics and Protected Audience for both Chrome and Android. The move comes over a year after Google abandoned plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome altogether.
You can read more about the demise of Privacy Sandbox from our friends at Search Engine Land.
What was Privacy Sandbox?
Google’s Privacy Sandbox was a space where a series of complex proposals to protect user privacy have been developed and are undergoing (or have undergone) extensive testing. In short, Privacy Sandbox was an attempt to fill in the many gaps that were expected to open up in the advertising ecosystem with third-party cookies being deprecated in the Chrome browser. But Google then said it would not deprecate third-party cookies after all.
One key proposal was to replace tracking of individual users with Topics, assigning them (temporarily and in a way that does not identify them) topics of interest based on their browsing.
But it wasn’t not just about the Chrome Browser and it wasn’t about Topics. There was also a Privacy Sandbox for Android that explored ways of preserving the app advertising ecosystem once users opted out of being tracked.
The writing was on the wall
On April 22, 2025, Google announced it was changing course and keeping third-party cookies in Chrome. Replacing those was the reason Privacy Sandbox existed, so it was only a matter of time before the project was killed.
“We’ll continue to enhance tracking protections in Chrome’s Incognito mode, which already blocks third-party cookies by default,” Chavez said in a blog post at the time. “This includes IP Protection, which we plan to launch in Q3 2025.”
His next comment was a masterpiece of understatement: “In light of this update, we understand that the Privacy Sandbox APIs may have a different role to play in supporting the ecosystem.” Chavez then added something about “gathering industry feedback” and sharing an updated roadmap at a time to be determined.
It seems safe to assume Privacy Sandbox would soon join Google Hangouts, Google+, Pigeon Transit, GooglePlay Movies & TV, Google Jamboard and many other company initiatives at the Great Google Graveyard.
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