Comment by petargyurov
3 years ago
Is this is a privacy win for anyone using a non-Chrome/ium browser? Given the majority of the population use Chrome, will most websites stop relying on cookies and instead use the Topics API?
Though I suppose cookies will always be a fallback option if the website detects that the browser doesn't support the Topics API...
You can feed websites fake topics to mislead them, or even allow the user to pick their interests if they do want ads. That's a lot easier than sending your browser through random websites to shake off trackers and analysers.
Cookies are hard because other browsers do isolation based on top-level domains. Fingerprinting is the only way to track non-Chrome browsers.
Google wants to do cookie isolation as well, but ad companies threatened to sue them over it, so they can't for now, not until there's a viable alternative.
I think it is a privacy win. Every now and then, probably once every few months, I come across a website on Firefox where I have to disable enhanced tracking protection. If Chrome stops allowing 3rd party cookies then sites will have to be built better and should see fewer problems with the enhanced tracking protection.