Chrome Engineering Director Justin Schuh posted on the Chromium Blog announcing the temporary rollback of the SameSite Cookie feature to ensure the stability of the website during the new coronavirus epidemic.

SameSite is a new cookie classification model that was introduced in the stable version of Chrome 80 released in early February. Chrome will default cookies that do not declare a SameSite value to SameSite=Lax. Only cookies set with SameSite=None; Secure can be accessed externally, provided they are accessed over a secure connection (i.e. HTTPS). It will change the past abuse of user privacy and ensure that cross-site cookies can only be accessed through HTTPS connections.

This policy enables users to disable third-party cookies. But at the same time, disabling third-party cookies may cause some sites to crash. To this end, Google said, "We want to ensure the stability of sites that provide essential services—including banking, online groceries, government services, and health care—that improve our daily lives during this time."

Only a handful of users have enabled the SameSite cookie feature so far in February, and Google had planned to gradually roll out the feature to the rest of its users over the rest of the year. Schuh said there should be little disruption to users, organizations or sites when the feature is rolled back.

The rollback is only temporary and the SameSite cookie feature will be turned back on, which Schuh said is expected to happen this summer.