With the launch of Chrome 80 in February, Google began gradually rolling out an update that changes how third-party cookies work on websites, called “SameSite.” Today, it announced that it is temporarily rolling back this SameSite requirements in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The SameSite policy was a change in how Chrome treats cookies. Before, Chrome accepted more cookies by default, including from third parties. SameSite flipped that default. At a high level, that essentially means that unless a third-party cookie explicitly was set by a website owner as being okay, Chrome would block it.