> Right now though, one can argue that this actually gives more data than before (i.e. tracking + topics instead of just tracking), but try to think about the situation in the future.

Right. From a privacy perspetive, the goal obviously has to be to eliminate third-party cookies and various covert fingerprinting channels. That's what the whole "privacy sandbox" is about. Why does that proposal need to include a component for ad targeting? Because the other parts will be literally unlaunchable without that.

The German government, and by extension the EU, is pretty much controlled by the German media publishers. Whatever they want, they will get. They're even allowed to deploy the blatantly GDPR-violating "accept tracking, pay a subscription fee, or you can't read the article at all" consent dialogs, with zero repercussions. And what those publishers want is to continue tracking everyone with third-party cookies, to the extent that they are demanding the EU block Chrome from deprecating them[0]. If we want to kill third-party cookies, there must be some solution that even Axel Springer et al will have to concede is good enough.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/eccf5514-8b83-4d85-8305-f882adf5d...