Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. RIP Privacy Sandbox.

Google's Privacy Sandbox Is Officially Dead
Source: Adweek
October 17th, 2025

Summary: After six years, Google is pulling the plug on Privacy Sandbox—the initiative launched in 2019 to develop privacy-safe alternatives to third-party cookies. Google confirmed to Adweek that it will sunset the entire project, though the company will continue privacy work under different labeling.

The decision is not surprising, six months after Google reversed course and said it wouldn't kill third-party cookies in Chrome after all. Per Google, the Privacy Sandbox APIs had "low levels of adoption." The news comes the same day as the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) closed its investigation into Google's plan to deprecate third-party cookies.  

What's going away:

• Topics API: Enables interest-based advertising without user-level tracking

• Attribution Reporting API: Measures ad conversions without cross-site tracking

• Protected Audience API: Retargeting without sharing browsing history

• IP Protection: Hides user IP addresses from third-party tracking tools 

• Private Aggregation: Aggregates audience data while preserving individual privacy

• Related Website Sets: Allows related websites to share limited data

• On-Device Personalization: Processes personalization on users' devices to keep data local and private

• Protected App Signals: Stores app usage signals on-device for relevant app install ads on Android

• Select URL: Enables privacy-preserving content sharing without showing underlying stored data

• SDK Runtime: Creates isolated execution environment for third-party SDKs on Android with restricted data access

What's staying (the only three tools that achieved significant adoption):

• CHIPS (Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State): Stores cookies separately for each site to prevent cross-site tracking

• FedCM (Federated Credential Management API): Lets users sign in with existing accounts while limiting data sharing

• Private State Tokens: Authentication tool for fraud prevention without tracking 

This marks the end of a long, winding, expensive, and painful road: Google repeatedly delayed cookie deprecation from 2020-2024, then pivoted to keeping cookies with a user consent option, then abandoned cookie deprecation altogether in April, and now has officially killed what remained of Privacy Sandbox.

Opinion: Let this moment mark the official end of the privacy movement in digital advertising. The arc that began with Cambridge Analytica in 2018 closes with Google sunsetting Privacy Sandbox in 2025. Until the next major data breach triggers public outcry, privacy rides in the back seat.

Frankly, good riddance. The privacy movement's solutions never addressed the core problem: user data being compromised in ways that cause real harm. They just kneecapped the industry because digital advertising became the convenient scapegoat.

To make matters worse, Big Tech weaponized "privacy" as a competitive tool. Apple used ATT to hurt Meta and Google while building up its own ad business. Google tried using Privacy Sandbox to consolidate power under the guise of protecting users. Regulators eventually caught on—hence the €150M fine to Apple and CMA oversight of Google. But only after the industry hemorrhaged billions preparing for a "cookieless future" that was never really about cookies.

So where does this leave us? Data clean rooms aren’t that useful anymore. Alternative ID solutions go from "critical infrastructure" to "nice-to-have tools." Marketers can be more aggressive with data again.

Can our industry handle this second chance? Probably not. Some ad tech vendor will get sloppy with PII. Some marketer will cross a line. Some data breach will make headlines. And we'll be right back where we started.

In order to avoid that, we must be aggressive, but transparent. Use data to deliver value to consumers in exchange for their attention and information. Make that value exchange crystal clear. Build trust through competence, not performative privacy theater.

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