Google abandons FLoC, introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies

theverge.com

27 points·nixass··4 comments

Of all the proposals I've seen this one actually seems to be the most sane. Trivial to opt-out or set manually, done completely locally, and doesn't expose any information I wouldn't be fine telling a stranger. Ya know if it means I stop getting those cringy Panera ads I might even opt-in.

* "But what's stopping Google from ___ in the future?" The same thing that's stopping them collecting your full browsing history today.

From the GitHub:

> One of IBA’s benefits is that it allows sites that are useful to the user, but perhaps could not be easily monetized via contextual advertising, to display more relevant ads to the user than they otherwise could, helping to fund the sites that the user visits.

Does someone have a good example of a site like this? It still feels like a solution in search of a problem. The TPA cookie people will just move to other fingerprinting techniques.

I think the big example is news sites.

The keyword analysis tends to be completely unrelated to purchase intent (nobody wants to see car ads next to a wreck photo, or "Travel to the Ukraine" next to the current tension)

So you tend to see a lot of fallback to either localized targeting (the $city newspaper can show restaurants and clothiers in $city) or low-value "brand presence" ads. It's overall not going to have the hot targetability of, say, a review website that obviously points to buyables.

Here's a topic list I'd like to start with:

1) No thanks

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