Comment by xg15
3 years ago
That makes it even worse IMO.
Google's justification for this was after all that it's a nerved alternative to persistent user identifiers (like 3rd party cookies), because you have to give the poor, starving advertisers something in exchange if you take away their ability to identify users.
So far, so bad, but if advertisers can in fact still identify users, then FLoC will just be another, relatively high-quality signal that they can add to the profile. (In fact, fingerprinting isn't even needed yet as Google apparently feels it's fine to activate FLoC long before they disable 3rd party cookies. How that squares with the presentation as a privacy feature is a lection in corpospeak I guess)
So especially in that situation, you should turn off FLoC.
They have to set up the replacement (topics API) before they get rid of the previous solution (third-party cookies). Sites need time to adjust and implement the new systems.
They also need to not make sweeping changes to the ad industry that could be described as anti-competitive or monopolistic. I doubt they'd get away with just turning off third-party cookies in their browser.