It's nefarious how they ask you if you want to turn on "ad privacy", indicating that this feature increases your privacy when in reality it does the opposite.
Thinking about it in a very abstract way I find the whole thing fascinating. Google is clearly terrified that the tracking protection offered by other browsers is going to become the norm and they’re trying to head that off at the pass by implementing this compromise. But I’m not sure why they’re all that worried about it, they still have the lions share or the browser market. Maybe they’re worried about incoming legislation?
This is a good example of anticompetitive/anti-monopoly regulation not only not protecting consumers, but in fact making things actively worse.
A better regulatory response would have been "having an advertising/analytics product and a browser product in one company is anticompetitive, split one of them into a separate business from the other, and then the browser product must not privilege the advertising/analytics product". Then the browser could, in fact, just disable third-party cookies without giving advertisers and analytics companies another alternative.
Of course they can. They just don’t want to.
Google isn't allowed to stop others tracking you without also removing their own ability to track you because that's anti-competitive.
So, what did the regulators actually say, and does it in fact allow Google to turn off third-party cookies without any replacement? If it does, then this is Google's fault for adding this feature in Chrome. If it doesn't, then this is the fault of bad regulation.
So if they are rolling out a UK mandated feature globally there is no question that Google is all for it.
In any case, this is still strictly a privacy downgrade to turn on. It's still deceptive to imply turning it on improves privacy.
That’s not true, this new system is a tracker, not tracking protection. Simply turning it off improves privacy.
> this feature increases your privacy when in reality it does the opposite
My clarification is that their new tracking system does increase your privacy compared to the old. It just doesn’t increase it as much as other browsers. We’re not in disagreement about what is better for users.
“If you let me punch your teeth out, the stabbings will stop (sometime in the future, terms and conditions may apply)”
All while refusing to acknowledge that there is an option that requires neither punching nor stabbing.
To an uninformed user that takes Google’s words at face value it sounds like an upgrade.
Third party cookies can do everything the topics API can do and more. Third party cookies lets sites collect granular data about what exact site you on and any data they want from it. This API just gives them some topics which may even be a random chosen one and not a real one.
Topics is a mess (see a great analysis from a colleague of mine[1]), but it’s a hard sell to call this current step nefarious.
I never claimed that. The current estimated timeline for phasing out 3rd party cookies as of last month is:
23Q4 Opt in testing for sites
24Q1 1% disabled
24Q2 fully disabled
https://privacysandbox.com/open-web/
> And once Chrome has phased out third-party cookies the topics API will strictly decrease my privacy, not increase it.
You are free to disable topics, sites, or even the entire system altogether. While it does decrease your privacy in return you can get more relevant ads. With 3rd party cookies if you disable them all you will break things even if those things are unrelated to ads.
This is unambiguously a privacy downgrade, regardless of what third party cookies may also be able to do.
If you are blocking 3rd party cookies by DNS you will also block topics too.