Is Teams being sabotaged on Chrome? This new privacy sandbox policy says so

Chrome is set to introduce a new privacy sandbox policy in January 2024, and this policy will affect those who access Teams on this browser. According to a post unveiled in the Microsoft 365 message center, those who use Teams on Chrome, need to be aware of the new policy, as it comes with important notes that will greatly impact the experience of using the platform on Google Chrome.

Starting in January, the new privacy sandbox policy will affect approximately 1% of Chrome users, and by the end of the next year, the policy should be entering its general rollout, meaning everybody using Chrome will be impacted by it.

The new policy will have a greater impact on Teams users accessing the platform on Chrome, as follows:

• Users of the new Teams app will have to click a banner every 24 hours to make sure they stay signed in to Teams.
• The new Teams app might render some experiences unavailable for users. These experiences include the ones that are embedded. Users might have to open them in a new tab, or just switch to the Teams desktop app.
• Teams users on Chrome will also notice an increased pressure to switch to the new version of Teams, dubbed Teams 2.0, or even download the desktop app if they’re using the classic version of Teams.
• Teams chat in the Outlook web app and Dynamics 365 will also be affected by the privacy sandboxing policy coming to Chrome.

Microsoft recommends switching to the Teams desktop app, which was recently updated to the new version. However, if this is not possible, then Enterprise admins can use the BlockThirdPartyCookies and CookiesAllowedForUrls to protect users from being impacted early, and allow time for them to make the necessary changes.

Is Microsoft Teams being sabotaged on Chrome?

Well, even if Teams is not officially sabotaged on Chrome, Google is surely making the necessary changes to somehow diminish the experience of using the platform on this browser. Let’s not forget that Microsoft Teams is by far the most popular choice for organizations when it comes to work-oriented platforms.

Teams have everything an employee would need: AI capabilities, such as Copilot, integration with the other Microsoft 365 apps for a seamless experience, plus, very easy access to video/audio calls.

On the other hand, Google has its own Suite, which is Cloud-based, and it also has the Google Workspace that supports AI capabilities, but it seems that they’re not yet as popular as Microsoft Teams is.

However, Chrome is by far the world’s most popular Internet browser, and a lot of people are using it to access the web-based versions of other popular platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, Microsoft Teams, or any other platform that you can name.

Ultimately, Google has the power to regulate its browser, and these regulations will end up impacting certain platforms. But if we’re being honest here, it could backfire: there is a chance users will still access the Teams for web, but on other browsers, such as Microsoft Edge.

This is because organizations that are already subscribed to Teams (aka the Teams Premium customers) won’t switch to another work-oriented platform, just for the sake of it.

So there isn’t any straight answer to this. Competition is competition, after all. But what do you think?