In spite of Manifest V3 being a shit show, I continue to see all manners of evidence that Google wants genuine honest reform for user privacy. The attitude & negativity is at severely problematic levels, and Google actually gets that improvement & reform is necessary to keep going for another decade without some kind of boil over/explosion.

I agree that Chrome in theory shouldnt be a part of Google. But generally I think there is incredibly little self-dealing, that some ideas do go wrong but usually there's not such a sinister backstory of self-interest driving things. I don't know about today, but I'm the past engineers would pretty definitely say they'd never seen anything like the insinuation & top down steering that's so regularly casually implied, and it's remarkable how this casual accusation of rot is left to dominate. It's really unfortunate.

But I still think I'm principle there should ideally be harder separation. But I really doubt we can get an adequate funding source lined up. Chrome supports humanity's preeminent multi-media platform, is a huge gift to the world. And that online world that exists because of Chrome and FF, the general health of that world, that's what keeps Google alive & keeps the money pouring in. If Google can't invest in the web who would step up?.I'd love to see hundreds of millions a years allocated to this collective treasure we all enjoy, that runs on almost as many systems as Doom runs on, but alas there's just not the collective motive & will to support our great works.

I really hope Chrome can offer users a choice here, and that the choice really is good and that we can opt to leave this terrible 3rd party cookie world behind. I like the idea of not having a hard break, of this being more of a shift, one that the world can be more involved in navigating. Fingers crossed.