The key to a safer Internet is to involve everyone, from users to web developers and everyone in between, in order to make it happen. But the internet is a big place, and privacy online has become a big issue, especially during the past few years. This is why Google launched the Privacy Sandbox, an initiative meant to create and launch new technologies to keep your privacy online safe. It was first announced in March and was met with controversy, especially over Google’s decision to get rid of third-party cookies for tracking—Google plans to remove this in Google Chrome, a decision that would shake up the way the Internet works. Now, Google has taken the decision to delay the rollout of this initiative.

Google says that they must advance at a prudent pace in order to accomplish this. This is critical to prevent endangering the financial models of many web publishers who offer free content. They also say that they must ensure that cookies are not replaced by alternative types of individual tracking by providing privacy-preserving technology, and inhibit the emergence of covert tactics like fingerprinting. So while Google’s intent might be in the right place, forcing such a big change in the industry, especially in the timeline they were planning to take on, is absurd, which is why Google’s pushing it back until 2023.

Google hopes to roll out the technologies that their initiative will outline by late 2022, while they’re expecting to begin phasing out support for third-party cookies over a three-month period in order to have everything going by late 2023. This will ensure, according to them, that web developers can begin preparing and that they will roll out their new solution in a timely manner. Google is trying to force a change, and even if they’re successful (Google Chrome is the most used browser worldwide, after all), it still won’t happen overnight.