Google ends Privacy Sandbox after six years, signaling a retreat from its cookie-free future

Google has officially shut down its Privacy Sandbox initiative, ending a six-year effort to reinvent online advertising around privacy-first standards. The decision follows months of declining industry adoption and comes just half a year after Google reversed plans to eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome.

Initially launched in 2019, Privacy Sandbox was billed as Google’s solution to the end of tracking cookies, aiming to develop technologies that balanced ad targeting with user privacy. But after repeated delays, limited uptake, and skepticism from publishers and regulators, the company confirmed this week that it is “retiring the entire project.”

“We will be continuing our work to improve privacy across Chrome, Android and the web, but moving away from the Privacy Sandbox branding,” a Google spokesperson told Adweek.

According to Google’s blog post, 10 core Sandbox technologies—including the Attribution Reporting API, Protected Audience API, Topics API, and IP Protection—will be discontinued. These tools were designed to support ad measurement and personalization without cross-site tracking, but Google said they saw “low levels of adoption” after years of testing.

The decision effectively dismantles one of the most ambitious privacy projects in digital advertising, marking a strategic pivot back to established methods. Google said it will continue to support a small subset of tools that gained traction, including:

• CHIPS (Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State), which isolates cookies by domain to prevent cross-site tracking.
• FedCM (Federated Credential Management API), a privacy-focused login system that limits data sharing from sign-in providers.
• Private State Tokens, which authenticate users without relying on traditional tracking mechanisms.

Privacy Sandbox had been seen as Google’s attempt to balance privacy regulation pressures—especially from the EU and UK’s Competition and Markets Authority—with its advertising dominance. But critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, accused Google of consolidating tracking power rather than removing it, arguing that the initiative would have replaced many data brokers with one central intermediary: Google itself.

The program’s demise underscores the complex trade-offs between privacy, transparency, and advertising performance. It also raises new questions about Google’s long-term ad strategy, as the company now returns to a more traditional approach centered on user choice rather than structural reform.

While Google insists it will continue exploring privacy improvements across Chrome and Android, the end of Privacy Sandbox closes a chapter in the industry’s long-running search for a post-cookie future—one that now seems further away than ever.