• by Laurie Sullivan , October 17, 2025

The UK Competition and Markets Authority released Google today from its legally binding Privacy Sandbox commitments after the CMA concluded that competition concerns no longer applies.

"After carefully considering the consultation responses to the June 2025 consultation, the CMA remains of the view that it has reasonable grounds for believing that its competition concerns no longer arise and that it is appropriate to release the commitments," according to a post on the CMA's website, releasing Google's commitment today. 

The commitments had been in place for approximately six years. 

Movement for an Open Web (MOW), an advocacy group, initiated the complainant. In this case, James Rosewell, co-founder of Movement for an open Web (MOW), wrote in an email that the decision is “a victory for the Open Web and for MOW’s role in the fight against Privacy Sandbox.”

He went on to explain that the CMA released Google’s commitments because it is convinced the Alphabet company “abandoned the most anticompetitive aspects of the Privacy Sandbox, namely the blocking of third-party cookies, that were based on bogus privacy claims.”

MOW, as an entity, still believes that CMA needs to “keep an eye on this situation as Google is a known recidivist and could easily U-turn again and threaten the interoperability on which the Open Web relies.”

In July 2024, Google said it would scrap its years-long efforts to eliminate third-party cookies on Chrome for those who didn’t want to disable them, but would roll out a new solution that gave people a choice of how and when to protect their privacy in the browser.

"We're discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out," Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox, wrote in a blog post published Monday.

It appears that path led to the UK Competition and Markets Authority releasing Google of its obligations.