On October 17, 2025, Google announced it would retire a list of Privacy Sandbox technologies, including Topics, Protected Audience and Attribution Reporting, and keep CHIPS, FedCM and Private State Tokens. As of October 2, 2026, the Chrome 144 and Chrome 153 release notes still describe the retirements as planned, and neither gives a final removal date.

Which technologies is Google retiring?

Google’s October 2025 post names the retired technologies and gives its reasons: ecosystem feedback about their expected value, and their low levels of adoption. The list covers:

  • Attribution Reporting API (Chrome and Android)
  • IP Protection
  • On-Device Personalization
  • Private Aggregation, including Shared Storage
  • Protected Audience (Chrome and Android)
  • Protected App Signals
  • Related Website Sets, including requestStorageAccessFor and Related Website Partition
  • SelectURL
  • SDK Runtime
  • Topics (Chrome and Android)

The feature status page, last updated August 14, 2026, sorts Chrome web features under four labels: Continue to support, Deprecate and remove, Discontinue, and Do not launch. Topics, Attribution Reporting, Protected Audience, Shared Storage and Related Website Sets sit under Deprecate and remove, along with Aggregation Service, Fenced Frames and Private Aggregation. IP Protection sits under Discontinue, which is a different label, as do Partitioned Popins and Related Website Partition.

The Do not launch label covers Fenced Storage Read, Private Proofs, Probabilistic Reveal Tokens and Script Blocking. All six Android features on the page are Deprecate and remove.

What stays, and why does it matter?

Google says CHIPS and FedCM have seen broad adoption, including support from other browsers. CHIPS improves cookie privacy and security. FedCM streamlines identity flows. Google will also maintain Private State Tokens and explore other ways to help developers reduce fraud and abuse.

The status page adds detail and one caveat:

  • CHIPS is supported by default in Chrome 114 and higher.
  • FedCM shipped in Chrome 108, and the page says other browsers do not support it yet.
  • Storage partitioning, the Storage Access API and User-Agent Client Hints also sit under Continue to support.

The October post and the status page differ on FedCM in other browsers. Treat cross-browser support as something to test, not assume. The same advice applies to any vendor that builds on CHIPS or FedCM: ask which browsers it has actually tested.

What do the Chrome 144 and 153 notes say?

Both sets of notes use the language of intent. Neither says a Privacy Sandbox API has been removed.

  • Chrome 144, stable January 13, 2026: Chrome plans to deprecate and remove Private Aggregation, Shared Storage and Protected Audience. The notes add that Private Aggregation is exposed only through Shared Storage and Protected Audience, so it needs no separate work.
  • Chrome 153, stable September 8, 2026: Protected Audience, Related Website Sets, Shared Storage, document.requestStorageAccessFor and Attribution Reporting are planned for deprecation and removal. The notes say requestStorageAccessFor works in Chrome only between Related Website Sets sites, so it goes with them.

Protected Audience and Shared Storage appear in both. Topics appears in neither set of notes, although the status page lists it under Deprecate and remove. The notes do not say which stage of the process each release performs, so read “planned” literally.

What should a buyer check now?

Start with dependencies, not headlines:

  • Ask whether any campaign, vendor or report uses Topics, Protected Audience, Shared Storage or Attribution Reporting data from Chrome.
  • Ask which vendors rely on CHIPS or FedCM, and which browsers they test.
  • Re-read the status page and the release notes before each planning cycle. The status page carries its own last-updated date, and its labels can change.
  • Separate measured results from modeled results in every attribution report.

On measurement, Google says it will keep engaging on an interoperable Attribution standard through the W3C’s Private Advertising Technology Working Group, per its October post. A proposal in a working group is not a feature a buyer can use today, and this article does not suggest otherwise.

How does Vectravia handle this?

Signal Reports provides last-touch and multi-touch attribution views and incrementality test design, with measured and modeled numbers labeled apart. A buyer who leaned on browser-side attribution data can see which figures in a report were measured and which were modeled. Reports are only as good as the signals feeding them, so ask which signals sit behind each number.