What’s the fate of the GAID?

Last week, in a blog post, Google announced that it has reversed course and will not deprecate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, after all. From the post (emphasis mine):

In addition, a lot has changed since we announced the Privacy Sandbox initiative in 2019 and entered into a formal engagement with the CMA and ICO in 2022. For example, the adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies has accelerated, new opportunities to safeguard and secure people’s browsing experiences with AI have emerged, and the regulatory landscape around the world has evolved considerably. Taking all of these factors into consideration, we’ve made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies. Users can continue to choose the best option for themselves in Chrome’s Privacy and Security Settings.

It’s interesting to note that this line of argumentation — that the broader adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies within the digital advertising ecosystem obviates the need to deprecate cookies — mirrors what Google wrote when it announced in December that it would no longer disallow the use of IP addresses for advertising measurement as a matter of platform policy.

Google seems to be distancing itself from the role of privacy enabler: with both cookies and the IP address, Google has stated that publishers and advertisers alike can avail themselves of tools to protect user privacy, and so Google does not need to administer platform policies for that purpose. If Google merely views itself as a neutral intermediary with no responsibility over potential privacy risks that occur downstream of its platform, and if, as seems likely, Google’s Privacy Sandbox is ultimately strategically sidelined, if not sunset, an interesting question arises. What is the fate of Android’s advertising identifier, the GAID?

The second-order effects on the app economy of tariff-related cost increases for the iPhone seem significant.

1. iPhone replacement cycles will most likely expand, meaning second-hand device sales (and adoption of the iOS ecosystem) could slow in markets like India, Brazil, etc.… pic.twitter.com/Cna1iVjTd4

— Eric Seufert (@eric_seufert) April 6, 2025

Recall that Google announced in February 2022 that it would eliminate the GAID entirely from Android in no less than two years. This platform policy change was accompanied by the introduction of the Privacy Sandbox for Android: Google essentially forked its extant Privacy Sandbox for Chrome suite of privacy-preserving tools and applied them to the Android setting.

Note that Google’s deprecation of the GAID, as depicted when it was announced, was more aggressive than Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy: whereas ATT gives users the choice to “allow tracking” with a prompt, Google planned to simply eliminate the GAID entirely. That said, the Privacy Sandbox tools seemed more intentional and functional than SKAdNetwork, even after several iterations. As I wrote in RIP GAID: Privacy Sandbox is coming to Android. What advertisers need to know:

I speculated when Apple first introduced ATT that Google would follow suit, albeit with a more moderated and controlled approach. The Privacy Sandbox for Android appears to be that: it’s a collaborative effort that invites participation from the industry in replacing the existing system for ads targeting on Android with something that is more mindful of consumer privacy. Although Google recently introduced some new privacy initiatives on Android, including the reanimation of its mostly-dormant “Opt Out of Ads Personalization” system setting as an Android-equivalent of Apple’s Limit Ad Tracking setting, it obviously wants to introduce further privacy controls to Android. And it aims to accomplish that with a Privacy Sandbox process for the platform.

But as Google notes in its announcement last week that cookie deprecation in Chrome has been abandoned, both the privacy and regulatory environments have evolved significantly since cookie deprecation was first unveiled more than five years ago. For one, the UK’s CMA mounted vigorous opposition to cookie deprecation; the CMA took a jaundiced view of Google’s plans with cookie deprecation, likely believing that the maneuver was an effort to drive more advertising revenue through its owned-and-operated channels, as I speculated in Why is Google killing cookies?:

So given that Google must have a commercial motivation in deprecating cookies, what is it? The most obvious is simply margin expansion: Google’s network business, which serves ads on third-party websites and apps, will almost certainly suffer if the Privacy Sandbox is less effective for targeting and measurement than third-party cookies (and early indicators suggest it is). If the economics of buying third-party open web inventory through Google’s tools degrades, some of that demand may simply be routed to Google’s owned-and-operated channels. And these channels feature much higher margin for Google than its Network business.

But while third-party cookies are really only relevant for open web advertising — and even there, only in the Chrome browser on desktop and Android, since third-party cookies are blocked by default on all browsers on iOS, as I unpack in this piece — the GAID is relevant for measurement and targeting on Google’s owned-and-operated channels on Android. In that sense, the GAID is more strategically important to the company. Chrome is essentially a loss leader, and Google’s exposure to the open web is fraught (and, potentially, soon to be severed as a result of its recent US “ad tech” antitrust ruling). But if Google can promote more advertising revenue flowing through Android, it will benefit directly. If GAID deprecation was anchored to cookie deprecation, my sense is that the recent about-face implies that the GAID will similarly be preserved.

I made the same argument in reverse when, last July, Google announced it would introduce a choice screen to dictate the availability of cookies:

I sense that Google wouldn’t continue to invest in a suite of tools — the Privacy Sandbox — that it ultimately renders irrelevant through the preservation of mobile advertising identifiers or cookies with light-touch opt-in prompts. Google also must contend with a global (see above) advertising campaign from Apple centered around the consumer benefits of privacy. If Google’s change in policy related to cookies is merely cosmetic, and its Chrome opt-in is designed as de facto deprecation, I think any opt-in prompt used for GAID access would be, too.

My point in that piece was that Google was unlikely to implement a policy change for cosmetic purposes: that the fates of third-party cookies and the GAID were intertwined, and any effort to deprecate one was an earnest effort to deprecate both. My belief is that Google’s announcement that it will not obstruct cookies in Chrome in any way probably spells the end of both the Privacy Sandbox as a strategic priority and any plans to deprecate Android’s GAID.