Tag Archives: Chrome

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – October 1, 2021

New updates 

Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are fully launched or in the process of rolling out (rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete), launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time (if not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete), and available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers. 



New look and feel for Workspace Updates email subscriptions 
We’ve improved the look and feel of the emails you receive when you subscribe to Workspace Updates. 
  • The emails themselves will be sent from [email protected], so be sure to update any inbox filters or labels you may have and check your spam folders if you don't immediately see them. 
  • Emails for the Workspace Updates Blog in non-English markets will update to this new format in the coming weeks. 
  • If you have any feedback about these emails after September 29th, please feel back to let us know in the linked form. 
Available now | Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts. | Workspace Updates Blog Email Subscription Feedback 



Porting in Google Voice now available in Canada 
If your organization has existing phone numbers with another service provider, you can port (or move) those numbers to Google Voice in Canada. | Learn more.



Previous announcements 

The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details. 



Live translated captions in Google Meet available in beta 
Launching in beta, live translated captions help video call participants communicate better by translating a spoken language to captions in another language. | Learn more here and here. | Available to meetings organized by Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Teaching & Learning Upgrade customers. | Apply to beta 



Add image watermarks in Google Docs 
You can now add image watermarks directly into Google Docs. This watermark image will repeat behind the text on every page of your document. | Learn more. 



Renaming “whitelisted domains” to “allowlisted domains” in the Admin console 
We’re updating instances of “whitelisted” in the Admin console to “allowlisted”. This change more accurately describes this action, as well as eliminates a non-inclusive term from our products. | Learn more.



Comment size increasing in Google Docs 
Comment width will intelligently scale based on your browser window to maximize the use of available screen space. | Learn more.



Replace your background with a video in Google Meet on Android 
In addition to replacing your Google Meet background with a static image on web and mobile, you can now replace your background with a video on Android. | Learn more. 



Quickly access Google Drive files in Chrome browser 
We’re adding a card onto the New Tab Page in your Chrome browser that will surface relevant files from your Google Drive, making it easier and more efficient to find the files you need. | Learn more.



View Alert Center notifications directly from the Admin console toolbar 
You can now quickly access Alert Center alerts from anywhere in the Admin console from the toolbar at top of the page. Selecting the new bell icon will surface the ten latest alerts, along with a brief description. | Learn more.



Use the “Slideshow” button in Google Slides 
We’re replacing what was previously the “Present” button in Slides to now say “Slideshow.” We hope this makes it clearer when you are beginning a slide show, and when you are sharing your screen in Meet. | Learn more. 



Review smart home devices used for work in your Admin console
Admins can now view and manage the smart displays and speakers that access work data in the Admin console, alongside other devices managed with Google endpoint management. | Learn more. 



For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).

Quickly access Google Drive files in Chrome browser

What’s changing 

We’re adding a card onto the New Tab Page in your Chrome browser that will surface relevant files from your Google Drive, making it easier and more efficient to find the files you need.  

In 2019, we launched the ability for some users to quickly search for files in the Chrome browser URL bar. Today, we’re taking that experience one step further by bringing intelligent file suggestions directly into your New Tab Page in Chrome . 

search for files in the Chrome browser URL bar

Search for files in the Chrome browser URL bar

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it

End users will be able to access their highest priority Drive files straight from the Chrome Desktop new tab page. The easily accessible interface will save end user time and mental load to navigate to relevant files. 

Getting started

Admins: 

  • This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled at the domain/OU/group level as long as the default New Tab Page experience is available to our users. This feature will not impact users for whom admins who have set a different New Tab Page experience using Chrome policies. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Google Drive cards on or off for your organization. 


Allow or disable Google file suggestions

Allow or disable Google file suggestions

End users: 

  • This feature will be on by default as long as users have not changed their New Tab Page experience. It can be disabled and re-enabled by the user by clicking the ‘Customize Chrome’ button in the bottom right of the new tab page. 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers. Also available to users with personal Google Accounts. 

Resources

An update on Memory Safety in Chrome

Adrian Taylor, Andrew Whalley, Dana Jansens and Nasko Oskov, Chrome security team

Security is a cat-and-mouse game. As attackers innovate, browsers always have to mount new defenses to stay ahead, and Chrome has invested in ever-stronger multi-process architecture built on sandboxing and site isolation. Combined with fuzzing, these are still our primary lines of defense, but they are reaching their limits, and we can no longer solely rely on this strategy to defeat in-the-wild attacks.

Last year, we showed that more than 70% of our severe security bugs are memory safety problems. That is, mistakes with pointers in the C or C++ languages which cause memory to be misinterpreted.

This sounds like a problem! And, certainly, memory safety is an issue which needs to be taken seriously by the global software engineering community. Yet it’s also an opportunity because many bugs have the same sorts of root-causes, meaning we may be able to squash a high proportion of our bugs in one step.

Chrome has been exploring three broad avenues to seize this opportunity:

  1. Make C++ safer through compile-time checks that pointers are correct.
  2. Make C++ safer through runtime checks that pointers are correct.
  3. Investigating use of a memory safe language for parts of our codebase.

“Compile-time checks” mean that safety is guaranteed during the Chrome build process, before Chrome even gets to your device. “Runtime” means we do checks whilst Chrome is running on your device.

Runtime checks have a performance cost. Checking the correctness of a pointer is an infinitesimal cost in memory and CPU time. But with millions of pointers, it adds up. And since Chrome performance is important to billions of users, many of whom are using low-power mobile devices without much memory, an increase in these checks would result in a slower web.

Ideally we’d choose option 1 - make C++ safer, at compile time. Unfortunately, the language just isn’t designed that way. You can learn more about the investigation we've done in this area in Borrowing Trouble: The Difficulties Of A C++ Borrow-Checker that we're also publishing today.

So, we’re mostly left with options 2 and 3 - make C++ safer (but slower!) or start to use a different language. Chrome Security is experimenting with both of these approaches.

You’ll see major investments in C++ safety solutions - such as MiraclePtr and ABSL/STL hardened modes. In each case, we hope to eliminate a sizable fraction of our exploitable security bugs, but we also expect some performance penalty. For example, MiraclePtr prevents use-after-free bugs by quarantining memory that may still be referenced. On many mobile devices, memory is very precious and it’s hard to spare some for a quarantine. Nevertheless, MiraclePtr stands a chance of eliminating over 50% of the use-after-free bugs in the browser process - an enormous win for Chrome security, right now.

In parallel, we’ll be exploring whether we can use a memory safe language for parts of Chrome in the future. The leading contender is Rust, invented by our friends at Mozilla. This is (largely) compile-time safe; that is, the Rust compiler spots mistakes with pointers before the code even gets to your device, and thus there’s no performance penalty. Yet there are open questions about whether we can make C++ and Rust work well enough together. Even if we started writing new large components in Rust tomorrow, we’d be unlikely to eliminate a significant proportion of security vulnerabilities for many years. And can we make the language boundary clean enough that we can write parts of existing components in Rust? We don’t know yet. We’ve started to land limited, non-user-facing Rust experiments in the Chromium source code tree, but we’re not yet using it in production versions of Chrome - we remain in an experimental phase.

That’s why we’re pursuing both strategies in parallel. Watch this space for updates on our adventures in making C++ safer, and efforts to experiment with a new language in Chrome.

New designs for Chrome and Chrome OS, by Latino artists

As we celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, we pay tribute to the generations of Latinos who have positively influenced and enriched society, arts, culture and science in the United States.

As a proud Latina, I have seen first hand how our diversity is our strength. We use various terms to define ourselves (Hispanic, Latinx, Latino, Black, Mexican, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, and more), yet we still can come together as one resilient community.

This year Chrome partnered with Latino artists to create a collection of themes that celebrate our heritage. You can use them to customize your Chrome browser and Chromebook wallpapers. The work reflects a variety of meaningful subjects, from family to the subtle ways we all stay connected. This collection continues our work commissioning contemporary artists to visually show how people use Chrome and Chromebooks to get things done, explore, find and connect. 

Meet the commissioned artists, and browse the 20 new backgrounds in the collection on the Chrome Web Store or in your Chromebook wallpaper gallery.

  • Chrome browser background depicting three people looking into the distance, with clouds behind them

    “Ni de aqui, ni de alla” - Arturo Torres


    “One of the struggles that comes from being a Mexican-American is that you don’t truly feel like you belong to either side. We aren’t Mexican enough for Mexicans and not American enough for Americans. We feel like we have to work twice as hard to please both parties. This is a reminder that we still belong and we can still celebrate both sides. We’re just as beautiful as our motherland.” -Arturo Torres is a New York Times bestselling illustrator, currently residing in Dallas, Texas. His works are a blend of vibrant photorealism in a whimsical comic-book style that makes up a distinctive hand-drawn look.


  • Chrome browser background depicting a bird holding a flower, standing next to 3 flowers

    “Paloma Mensajera” - Cecilia Ruiz


    “‘Paloma Mensajera’ celebrates the joy of finding and being found.” -Cecilia Ruiz is an author, illustrator, graphic designer and educator. Born and raised in Mexico City, Cecilia currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.


  • Chromebook background depicting a variety of fruits sprinkled with chili powder, laid out into a pattern

    "Chile y Limón" - Liz Hernández


    “‘Chile y Limón’ depicts the simple act of cutting fresh fruit and sprinkling chili powder on it. This humble action transforms an already perfect snack into a complex, nostalgic treat.” -Liz Hernández is a Mexican artist based in Oakland, California. Her art practice, which includes painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing, is deeply influenced by her memories and surroundings of Mexico City.


  • Chromebook background depicting insects in a garden scene

    "The Scenic Route” - Marisol Ortega


    “‘The Scenic Route’ pays tribute to never losing your sense of joy, play, and exploration, even in our backyards.” -Marisol Ortega is a first-generation Mexican-American designer, illustrator, and letterer living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She pulls inspiration from childhood memories of visiting her abuela’s home in Michoacán, Mexico.


  • Chrome browser background depicting a person wearing 3 pairs of glasses, each a different style

    "Lenses” - Niege Borges


    “This artwork represents the multiple ways of seeing the world, for people that are open to see them.” -Niege Borges is a Brazilian illustrator and graphic designer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is colorful, vibrant and playful. She likes to portray women, gender fluid people and explore different races and body shapes.


Testing new ways to explore and share through Chrome

When we work on new features for Chrome, we rely on feedback from the millions of people who use it every day. Hearing from people helps us build better features for them. And test builds, like Beta channel of Chrome, are some of the best ways for us to get input on new features, so we can fine-tune them before they are released. 


Flags and experiments in Chrome Beta let you choose which in-development features you want to test out before they hit the main stage. With our latest Chrome Beta release, you can try out some upcoming features that can help you more easily explore, keep track of, and share the things you find on the web.


Get things done faster with cards on the New Tab Page

Looking for that taxes spreadsheet you opened yesterday, but don’t want to spend time searching through your history? We’re starting to roll out cards on the New Tab Page that help you pick up where you left off based on your browsing history if you are signed into Chrome. The cards make it easy to revisit past activities or tasks, like planning a meal, shopping for a gift or working on a document in Google Drive. Try the feature by enabling the #ntp-modules flag on your computer. Here are a few ways they’ll show up:

  • Recipes (#ntp-recipe-tasks-module): Find recently-visited and related recipes when you open a new tab, so you can rediscover that delicious-looking marinara recipe, and others like it.
  • Shopping Cart (#ntp-chrome-cart-module): Don’t lose that deal — pick up on your shopping right where you left off. When you step away or browse on other sites, you can jump back into your open carts just by opening a new tab.
  • Docs (#ntp-drive-module): Cards on the New Tab Page can help you find your way back to recent documents you’ve opened in Google Drive. They can also help you find relevant docs recently edited by collaborators, so it’s easy to cross things off your to-do list. 

Chrome new tab page with a card containing links to recent Google Drive files below the Search bar

Keep searching without needing to hit the back button

When you’re looking something up in Google Search, sometimes it takes navigating to more than one page to find exactly what you are looking for. To make it easier to navigate from one search result to the next in Chrome, we’re experimenting with adding a row beneath the address bar on Chrome for Android that shows the rest of the search results so you can get to the next result without having to go back. You can try this yourself in Chrome Beta by enabling the #continuous-search flag on Android.

Animation of a Google search for the term “Google Pixel”. A search result is selected, and when the page loads, small tiles appear at the top of the Chrome window. Selecting one of those tiles loads another search result

Highlight and share quotes from the web

Want to share an interesting tidbit from an article you’re reading? It’s easy to do so with quote cards in Chrome. We’re starting to roll out a new experiment on Android that allows you to create a stylized image from interesting text you find on websites. You can copy these images for yourself or share them with others. Give it a go by enabling the #webnotes-stylize flag on your Android phone or tablet. Once enabled, when you visit a website, just long press a piece of text to highlight it, tap Share, and select a template by tapping “Create card” from the menu.

Animation of text from a website being highlighted then shown on several pre-designed card templates with different fonts types, colors and backgrounds

Testing these features and getting a better understanding of how you use them will help us optimize these tools for everyone. So if you’re someone who likes to kick the tires and try out new features, just download Chrome Beta, type chrome://flags into your address bar (or click on the Experiments beaker icon), and enable flags to start testing today. And please share your feedback — you can find more details on how to do that on our Support page.


Privacy and performance, working together in Chrome

For most people, internet browsers like Chrome act as a window to the web, where you can read the latest news, find the perfect gift or finally cross that task off your to-do list. And when you browse the web from A to Z, you definitely want an experience that offers peace of mind.


That's why today, we're making a number of privacy features more accessible, useful and powerful in Chrome — helping you make informed decisions faster, and saving you some battery, too.


Per-site permissions, now just one tap away  

Sometimes, when you visit a site, it might ask for access to your microphone, location and camera. With the updated site safety controls, we’ve made it easier to keep track of which site has permission to what information. Simply tap the lock icon on the left side of the Chrome address bar to open the updated panel, which shows what permissions you’ve granted for that particular site. From there, you’ll be able to more easily toggle between sharing and not sharing access to things like your location and your camera. And in an upcoming release, we’ll also add an option to delete the site from your browsing history in Chrome.

Animation showing new Site Controls interface

With the updated site safety controls, you can check what permissions the site you are visiting has, and change it quickly.

The updated site controls are now rolling out in Chrome on Android phones and tablets, and will come to other platforms in upcoming releases.


New Chrome actions, including safety checks from the address bar

Chrome Actions are a quick and simple way to take an action right from Chrome’s address bar. For example, if you type “delete history” or “edit passwords,” you can complete that action then and there. Since their introduction in November 2020, we’ve seen people use Chrome Actions millions of times — and starting today, there’s even more you can do with them. 

We’re adding new actions to make managing your privacy and security easier. Simply type “safety check” to check the security of passwords, scan for malicious extensions, and more. You can also type “manage security settings” or “manage sync”  to quickly access relevant controls.

Animation showing how you can run Chrome’s safety check by typing “safety check” into the address bar

 You can now run Chrome’s safety check from the address bar

Improved Site isolation and phishing detection, to protect you from attacks

With Chrome, you don’t need to be a security expert to be safe online, as we’re constantly adding new security updates that work behind the scenes for you. 

In this release we're expanding Site Isolation, a security feature that protects you from malicious websites. (The magic lies in processing each site separately, so they can't access data they're not supposed to. You can find more technical details on our security blog.) Site Isolation will now cover a broader range of sites, as well as extensions, and all of this comes with tweaks that improve Chrome’s speed.

You can have the best of both worlds — speed and security — with our next update, too. Phishing continues to be one of the leading threats on the web, but protecting against such attacks can sometimes impact browser speed. With the latest improvements in image processing in Chrome, phishing detection is now 50 times faster and drains less battery. 

Look out for these new updates and features coming to Chrome on Android and Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS in the upcoming weeks. And as we continue to roll out new privacy and security updates, we hope you feel even more safe, empowered and in control of your data as you use Chrome to browse the web.

Privacy and performance, working together in Chrome

For most people, internet browsers like Chrome act as a window to the web, where you can read the latest news, find the perfect gift or finally cross that task off your to-do list. And when you browse the web from A to Z, you definitely want an experience that offers peace of mind.


That's why today, we're making a number of privacy features more accessible, useful and powerful in Chrome — helping you make informed decisions faster, and saving you some battery, too.


Per-site permissions, now just one tap away  

Sometimes, when you visit a site, it might ask for access to your microphone, location and camera. With the updated site safety controls, we’ve made it easier to keep track of which site has permission to what information. Simply tap the lock icon on the left side of the Chrome address bar to open the updated panel, which shows what permissions you’ve granted for that particular site. From there, you’ll be able to more easily toggle between sharing and not sharing access to things like your location and your camera. And in an upcoming release, we’ll also add an option to delete the site from your browsing history in Chrome.

Animation showing new Site Controls interface

With the updated site safety controls, you can check what permissions the site you are visiting has, and change it quickly.

The updated site controls are now rolling out in Chrome on Android phones and tablets, and will come to other platforms in upcoming releases.


New Chrome actions, including safety checks from the address bar

Chrome Actions are a quick and simple way to take an action right from Chrome’s address bar. For example, if you type “delete history” or “edit passwords,” you can complete that action then and there. Since their introduction in November 2020, we’ve seen people use Chrome Actions millions of times — and starting today, there’s even more you can do with them. 

We’re adding new actions to make managing your privacy and security easier. Simply type “safety check” to check the security of passwords, scan for malicious extensions, and more. You can also type “manage security settings” or “manage sync”  to quickly access relevant controls.

Animation showing how you can run Chrome’s safety check by typing “safety check” into the address bar

 You can now run Chrome’s safety check from the address bar

Improved Site isolation and phishing detection, to protect you from attacks

With Chrome, you don’t need to be a security expert to be safe online, as we’re constantly adding new security updates that work behind the scenes for you. 

In this release we're expanding Site Isolation, a security feature that protects you from malicious websites. (The magic lies in processing each site separately, so they can't access data they're not supposed to. You can find more technical details on our security blog.) Site Isolation will now cover a broader range of sites, as well as extensions, and all of this comes with tweaks that improve Chrome’s speed.

You can have the best of both worlds — speed and security — with our next update, too. Phishing continues to be one of the leading threats on the web, but protecting against such attacks can sometimes impact browser speed. With the latest improvements in image processing in Chrome, phishing detection is now 50 times faster and drains less battery. 

Look out for these new updates and features coming to Chrome on Android and Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS in the upcoming weeks. And as we continue to roll out new privacy and security updates, we hope you feel even more safe, empowered and in control of your data as you use Chrome to browse the web.

Polishing up emoji and making them easier to share

We talk a lot about the most frequently used emoji — ?, ?,❤️... But what about ?? Who will speak for ?? With over 3,521 emoji, there are a lot you have to scroll past to get to ?. While working from home, plus the delay of Unicode’s next emoji release, we had some time to reflect and answer last year’s seemingly rhetorical question: What does World Emoji Day look like without new emoji?


Well, it looks like giving some love to hundreds of emoji already on your keyboard — focusing on making them more universal, accessible and authentic — so that you can find an all-new fav emoji (I'm fond of ??). And, you can find all of these emoji (yes, including the king, ?) across more of Google’s platforms including Android, Gmail, Chat, Chrome OS and YouTube.

Emoji for everyone

Emoji have a global audience and it’s important for them to be globally relevant. Pie emoji is a curious one — it previously looked like a very specific American pumpkin pie (a family favorite!). Now it’s something everyone recognizes. I could crack a joke about how there’s more food to go around but it's not really a joke: This minor change means this one emoji can represent a whole host of pies — apple pie, blueberry pie, strawberry pie, cherry pie, chicken pot pie, beef and mushroom…the list goes on.

Animation of pie emoji changing from a slice o a whole pie

Have you ever wondered why an emoji looks the way it does? Like, the bikini emoji ? — does it really need an invisible ghost wearing it? Now, any body is a bikini body.


Animation of bikini emoji changing to new design

Other emoji changes are long overdue. This year has been eye-opening, and now, so is the face mask emoji ?. This emoji originated in Japan, where people regularly wear masks even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, masking is a universal way of showing kindness to others.

Animation of mask emoji opening it's eyes and blinking


Emoji you can’t miss

When designing emoji, you often have to exaggerate sizes. Our transportation emoji are now easier to see since the new designs allow them to take advantage of the small space they occupy.

Animation of emoji cars changing to their new design

Emoji that get the job done

However, sometimes deviating too far from reality means an emoji comes along and taunts you, haunting your dreams. Oh, that doesn’t happen to you? Just me? Well, when I close my eyes I see the scissors emoji (✂️). I know it’s just an emoji and doesn’t need to be able to actually cut things…but the new one can!

Animation of scissors emoji changing to new design and closing blades

One of the perks of the job is that I get to learn all kinds of things — like the history of accordion design ?, the anatomy of an octopus, how parachutes work! As someone who never learned to drive, it took designing emoji to learn that the yellow painted lines on the road tell you to stay on the right of the yellow line. But, how can you stay on the right of the yellow line if the road is flanked by yellow lines? Well, our new design for motorway ?️ will pass its next driving exam.

Animation of motorway changing to new design

Other emoji just needed to be cooked a bit longer ? (or in some cases, dropped in the fryer).

Animation of food emoji (croissant, rice, bacon, tampura) changing to new designs

Emoji that keep you company at night

If you look close enough, you might also notice a few additions when you switch over to dark theme in a few of the new designs.

Animation of camping emoji changing to dark them with new stars

Emoji that show up in more places than ever before

Android 12 will include all of these emoji when it rolls out this fall ??. And to make it easier for everyone to see emoji ? no matter how old your phone is or when your favorite messaging app updates, starting with Android 12, all apps that support Appcompat will automagically get the latest and greatest emoji ?. Now developers don’t have to write code to display cute baby seals ???.


Can’t wait until the fall? Beginning this month, you will be able to send ? and receive ? emoji in Gmail and Chat without fear they will appear broken ?. Have a Chromebook ? ? We’ve got you covered ☔ with a shiny new emoji picker coming this month. Watching your favorite creator on YouTube and chatting in the live Chat ? ? Send as many ? emoji as you like later this year.

An updated timeline for Privacy Sandbox milestones

Today, we’re sharing the latest on the Privacy Sandbox initiative including a timeline for Chrome’s plan to phase out support for third-party cookies. While there’s considerable progress with this initiative, it's become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right.


The Privacy Sandbox initiative aims to create web technologies that both protect people’s privacy online and give companies and developers the tools to build thriving digital businesses to keep the web open and accessible to everyone, now, and for the future. To make this happen, we believe the web community needs to come together to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web, giving people more transparency and greater control over how their data is used. 


In order to do this, we need to move at a responsible pace. This will allow sufficient time for public discussion on the right solutions, continued engagement with regulators, and for publishers and the advertising industry to migrate their services. This is important to avoid jeopardizing the business models of many web publishers which support freely available content. And by providing privacy-preserving technology, we as an industry can help ensure that cookies are not replaced with alternative forms of individual tracking, and discourage the rise of covert approaches like fingerprinting.


We plan to continue to work with the web community to create more private approaches to key areas, including ad measurement, delivering relevant ads and content, and fraud detection. Today, Chrome and others have offered more than 30 proposals, and four of those proposals are available in origin trials. For Chrome, specifically, our goal is to have the key technologies deployed by late 2022 for the developer community to start adopting them. Subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and in line with the commitments we have offered, Chrome could then phase out third-party cookies over a three month period, starting in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023. 


Each proposal goes through a rigorous, multi-phased public development process, including extensive discussion and testing periods. This is consistent with how other open APIs and web technologies get developed:

  • Discussion: The technologies and their prototypes are discussed in forums like GitHub or W3C groups.
  • Testing: The technologies are rigorously tested in Chrome through potentially numerous origin trials, allowing for transparency and feedback throughout. For example, we received substantial feedback from the web community during the origin trial for the first version of FLoC. We plan to conclude this origin trial in the coming weeks and incorporate input, before advancing to further ecosystem testing.
  • Ready for adoption: Once the development process is complete, the successful technologies are ready to be used at scale. They will be launched in Chrome and ready for scaled use across the web.

After this public development process, and subject to our engagement with the CMA, our plan for Chrome is to phase out support for third party cookies in two stages:

  • Stage 1 (Starting late-2022): Once testing is complete and APIs are launched in Chrome, we will announce the start of stage 1. During stage 1, publishers and the advertising industry will have time to migrate their services. We expect this stage to last for nine months, and we will monitor adoption and feedback carefully before moving to stage 2.
  • Stage 2 (Starting mid-2023):Chrome will phase out support for third-party cookies over a three month period finishing in late 2023.

Soon we will provide a more detailed schedule on privacysandbox.com, where it will be updated regularly to provide greater clarity and ensure that developers and publishers can plan their testing and migration schedules. 

Along with progress on developing alternatives to third-party cookies, we continue to advance another key Privacy Sandbox goal to combat covert tracking like device fingerprinting. For instance, last month we published an update on our plans for User Agent string reduction, a project which aims to reduce the possibility of using this data to fingerprint and track users across the web. 


We believe that the Privacy Sandbox will provide the best privacy protections for everyone. By ensuring that the ecosystem can support their businesses without tracking individuals across the web, we can all ensure that free access to content continues. And because of the importance of this mission, we must take time to evaluate the new technologies, gather feedback and iterate to ensure they meet our goals for both privacy and performance, and give all developers time to follow the best path for privacy.


Our commitments for the Privacy Sandbox

We all expect a more private and secure web. The Privacy Sandbox initiative aims to help build it by developing new digital advertising tools to protect people’s privacy and prevent covert tracking, while supporting a thriving ad-funded web. From the start of this project, we have been developing these tools in the open, and sought feedback at every step to ensure that they work for everyone, not just Google. As many publishers and advertisers rely on online advertising to fund their websites, getting this balance right is key to keeping the web open and accessible to everyone. 


So when the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced its formal investigation of the Privacy Sandbox in January, we welcomed the opportunity to engage with a regulator with the mandate to promote competition for the benefit of consumers. 


This process has also recognized the importance of reconciling privacy and competition concerns. In a first-of-its-kind review involving converging regulatory authorities and expertise, the United Kingdom’s privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), is working collaboratively with, and providing direct input to, the CMA on Google’s approach.


Today we are offering a set of commitments — the result of many hours of discussions with the CMA and more generally with the broader web community — about how we’ll design and implement the Privacy Sandbox proposals and treat user data in Google’s systems in the years ahead. The CMA is now asking others in the industry for feedback on these commitments as part of a public consultation, with a view to making them legally binding. If the CMA accepts these commitments, we will apply them globally. 


The commitments


Consultation and collaboration  

Throughout this process, we will engage the CMA and the industry in an open, constructive and continuous dialogue. This includes proactively informing both the CMA and the wider ecosystem of timelines, changes and tests during the development of the Privacy Sandbox proposals, building on our transparent approach to date. We will work with the CMA to resolve concerns and develop agreed parameters for the testing of new proposals, while the CMA will be getting direct input from the ICO.  


No data advantage for Google advertising products 

Google has always had policies and practices to safeguard the use of people’s data. And we have explicitly stated that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use such identifiers in our products. 


Building on this principle, the commitments confirm that once third-party cookies are phased out, our ads products will not access synced Chrome browsing histories (or data from other user-facing Google products) in order to track users to target or measure ads on sites across the web. 


Further, our ads products will also not access synced Chrome browsing histories or publishers' Google Analytics accounts to track users for targeting and measuring ads on our own sites, such as Google Search. 


No self-preferencing

We will play by the same rules as everybody else because we believe in competition on the merits. Our commitments make clear that, as the Privacy Sandbox proposals are developed and implemented, that work will not give preferential treatment or advantage to Google’s advertising products or to Google’s own sites. 


What’s next

We appreciate the CMA’s thoughtful approach throughout the review and their engagement with the difficult trade-offs that this process inevitably involves. We also welcome feedback from the public consultation and will continue to engage with the CMA and with the industry on this important topic. We understand that our plans will be scrutinized, so we’ll also continue to engage with other regulators, industry partners and privacy experts as well. 


We believe that these kinds of investments in privacy will create more opportunity, not less. The Privacy Sandbox seeks a way forward that improves people’s privacy online while ensuring that advertisers and publishers of all sizes can continue to succeed.


Source: Google Chrome