MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Google announced on Tuesday it plans to end support for third-party cookies — in its Chrome browser within two years.

Cookies are small pieces of code that web sites deliver to a visitor’s browser, and stick around as the person visits other sites. Third-party cookies are often added by advertisers and ad networks, in addition to the site the user is actually visiting, and can be used to track users across multiple sites, and to target ads and see how they perform.

Justin Schuh, director of Chrome engineering, in a blog post Tuesday said Google will phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome once it has figured out how to address the “needs of users, publishers, and advertisers” and it has developed tools to “mitigate workarounds.”

“Users are demanding greater privacy – including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used – and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands,” Schuh said.

The changes, amid regulatory conversations and other moves in the digital world toward more privacy features, will affect how some advertising players reach consumers online.

(Photo by Gokhan Balci/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)