After years of pushing timelines for third-party cookie deprecation and eventually watering it down to an opt-in dialog, it seems Google has now fully given up on it:
Next steps for Privacy Sandbox and tracking protections in Chrome
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.
This is such a huge loss for Chrome users and the web as a whole.
They still block third-party cookies in incognito mode, but that’s such a small share of browsing.
They also say:
Users can continue to choose the best option for themselves in Chrome’s Privacy and Security Settings.
That’s nice, but only a small share of users goes into these settings, let alone understands the privacy implications of disabling third-party cookies.
There will also be not a lot of incentive for users to turn third-party cookies off, as websites which rely on them will continue to break. With third-party cookies enabled for the majority of users on the web, website vendors have no incentive to build alternatives and ad-networks still have free reign to track users.