Comment by redox99

> Those aren't topics.

Don't worry, they'll keep the first version mild, and in a few years they'll update it with more granularity.

> The real thing you should be worried about is third party cookies. They don't have any of these privacy features that topics has and they can collect a lot more data. Both of your examples are possible with third party cookies, but not with topics. Google is trying to phase out 3rd party cookies sometime next year.

This is basically saying "we'll screw you over, but that's ok because we promise to stop screwing you over this other way". It only shows how massive their conflict of interest is.

If chrome was developed by some honest, unrelated company, they would not include this kind of spyware (because it doesn't benefit the user[1]), and also try to block 3rd party cookies.

[1] I guess they could optionally include it if users would prefer seeing more personalized ads, but it would be something opt-in that doesn't try to trick you into enabling it, like Chrome does. But realistically they wouldn't even bother to develop something like this.